You must take living so seriously that even at seventy, for example, you'll plant olive trees -- and not for your children, either, but because although you fear death you don't believe it, because living, I mean, weighs heavier.- Nazim Hikmet, Turkish poet, persecuted during the Cold War for his communist views (1901-1963)
I have two questions:
1) What do you think of his reason for planting a tree. Do you think that living weighs heavier than death? and
2) Would you plant a tree when you're 70?
hmmm... I don't really understand what this means.
ReplyDeleteI can definitely imagine someone planting a tree in their old age for the benefit of the next generation though.
yeah, that was kinda my response. still thinking on it, though.
ReplyDeletelife is a "heavy" or "weighty" thing in that i think we hold it in greater worth than death. and yet, clinging to life when it's past your time seems more foolish to me than anything. it's sort of a positive view of the more negative "rage against that black night" idea.