Motherhood, the Table of Life

A young man of twenty looks at the girl of his dreams as a hungry man looks at an appetizing table. She is then the pomegranate and the grapes, "she is the apples and the fresh dates." And if imagination lifts him a little higher, he looks at her as a lost wanderer looks at a dewy oasis: she is the water and the greenery, she is the shade and the dew! Then his life reaches its noon, and the sun of life looks down upon him from overhead; he turns to what had stretched out as shadows and phantoms across the range of his dreams, and finds them keeping him company, come very close to him — and then the bride of his dreams becomes the companion of a lifetime and the partner of a life!

From this we see that the further a man advances in years, the more he finds himself unable to take the decisive step toward the goal of family life. This girl is long of shadow, and that one short; this one is homely of face and that one beautiful; and neither this one nor that can satisfy his hunger! That is because the mind wishes to share one table with the heart. The mind seeks a mother, and the heart seeks a wife; and the truth of the matter is that both of them are seeking the table of life — seeking motherhood. And so the man is a child and the child is a man, and neither of them sees any happiness without woman — the table of life and its bliss!