If you don't know the guy on the other side of the world,
love him anyway because he's just like you.
He has the same dreams, the same hopes and fears.
It's one world, pal.
We're all neighbors.
Frank Sinatra, 1963 Playboy magazine interview
I can remember another situation that sticks in my mind. One was this man whose grave we found in Normandy. He was my platoon guide.
When you marched, you had a platoon going down the road in a column of threes, and you had the squad leaders at the head of each squad, and you had the assistant squad leaders at the rear of each squad. I, as a lieutenant, was ahead, and right behind was the platoon guide, and they guided on him, where he went, they followed him. He was about the third in command. There was a lieutenant in command of the platoon, and the platoon sergeant was an assistant second in command, and the guide was third. He was a nice fellow. He was a county agent somewhere in Kentucky, had an education. And we got in one situation through this hedgerow, and he took the BAR (Browning Automatic Rifle) that big rifle with a tripod out there, and he was firing it, and he got killed right there… they got him… just bang, he dropped dead.
And that had me upset… and uh, oh, I don’t know… it was just… just kind of, that… I think that was one of the hardest losses I had was that guy. I really liked him and he was really… he really helped me, and he was for me. Some of those non-coms had come in from the old Second Horse Calvary out of Fort Riley, Kansas. They were old regular army, and they were kind of opinionated. They had been that rank for probably years, and I was a damn 90-day wonder out of OCS (Officer Candidate School) you know, I didn’t know nothing, and I was green behind the ears, probably five or ten years younger than they were. But this kid was just, he was just super… and that hurt me to loose that guy.
What was his name?
Cundiff,… But anyway … that’s enough for now. When I think of him, I could cry, and I don’t want to cry.
Ralph Cundiff
Rank: S. Sergeant
Date Of Death: July 6, 1944
Kentucky
Unit 330 Infantry 83 Division
Decoration: Purple Heart
Serial # 35497961
Lawrence L. Chittenden, My Father's War
then walks with us silently out of the night.
These are the words we dimly hear:
You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.
Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.
Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.
Give me your hand.
Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God
That is the feeling of life: you've got to go, all the time.
You get to your job, what is your first thought? "I want to get home."
But you get home, you feel cooped up; you've got to get out.
You're out, it's late; you've got to get back.
Wherever you are, you've got to get the hell out of there!
Jerry Seinfeld, Stand-Up Confidential
No matter what he does,
every person on earth plays a central role
in the history of the world.
And normally he doesn't know it.
Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
The great lessons from the true mystics, from the Zen monks,
is that the sacred is in the ordinary,
that it is to be found in one's daily life,
in one's neighbors, friends, and family, in one's back yard,
and that travel may be a flight from confronting the sacred.
To be looking everywhere for miracles is a sure sign
of ignorance that everything is miraculous.
Abraham H. Maslow, Religions, Values, and Peak Experiences
In the leaving, in the letting go,
let there be this to hold onto at the last:
The enduring of love,
the persisting of hope,
the remembering of joy,
The offering of gratitude,
the receiving of grace,
the blessings of peace.
Jan Richardson
Greed is a bottomless pit
which exhausts the person
in an endless effort to satisfy the need
without ever reaching satisfaction.
Erich Fromm
You can never get enough of what you don't really want.
Werner Erhard