Book Recommendation

ZORBA THE GREEK

To have a passion, to amass golden pounds, and suddenly to conquer your passion and throw away everything you possess—toss it into the air. Or to free yourself from one passion by obeying another that is higher. But isn’t that just a different form of slavery: sacrificing yourself for an idea, for your nationality, your God? Or could it be that the higher one’s master stands, the rope tying one to slavery is lengthened by the same amount? In that case, if we jump and frolic in a much wider domain, we die without ever discovering its boundaries. Is that what freedom means?

I was passing through a small village one day. An old fogey ninety years old was planting an almond tree. ‘Hey, grandpa,’ I say to him, ‘are you really planting an almond tree?’ And he, all bent over as he was, he turns and says to me, ‘My boy, I act as though I’m never going to die.’ I answered him in my turn, ‘I act as though I’m going to die at any moment.’ Which of the two of us was right, Boss?”