Every Month a Picture — Come, Let Us Crown Life

Every Month a Picture

I met her by chance..

And that same chance led her to Lebanon; she is not from my country, though I wished she were, for I wish every good new thing for my country.

She is a woman of the West, eighty-two years old; the years are drawn plainly across her calm face, whose features are evenly marked by withering and pallor — except for two bright, piercing eyes.

It is not strange to meet a human being of all these years; nor is it any wonder that an unmarried woman should reach this stage...

The strangeness lies wholly in this old woman's story... She told it to me herself, saying that exactly a year ago she discovered that she had an emptiness of time; an emptiness she felt as an ache, one that children and grandchildren could not fill. So she thought of filling it with something dear, that would make up for it and be wide enough for her to bury her affections in; and she stretched out her hand to the nearest of things — to the book...

And so she became a student once more, walking with the students to class in the morning, and sitting through the long nights before the lamp to prepare her lessons for the next day: for it would be a disgrace to sit silent in class when the discussion grows heated, or to stand with folded hands when a question is put to her.

After that she opened her eyes to look for the emptiness, and found no trace of it...

She spoke of all this with relish and delight, and passed on to speak of her philosophy of life: life calls us to live it with all our strength, and to spend ourselves in it before it spends us; life, which demands of man a movement that never stops, an activity that never tires, and a continual renewal in sense and thought and being, lest the rust of the days disable it.

This life, which we entered and which we shall leave under compulsion — why not do at least one thing in it: decide for ourselves the task of that short span of time between the cradle and the grave?

I listened to the eighty years that were searching for the future, hopes contending in her breast, and in my ears rang an old voice — a voice that still makes me tremble whenever I remember it; I feel something in my chest melting with grief, and my soul writhing in pain... It is the voice of the negative generations that have accompanied our history: fate, submission, the unseen...

And I stopped my ears to cry out at the top of my voice: Fate has grown old. It grew decrepit long ago. Take it down from its throne, and come, let us crown life!