April 17, 1860.—The cloud has lifted;
I am better. I have been able to take my usual walk on the Treille;
all
the buds were opening and the young shoots were green on all the
branches. The rippling of clear water, the
merriment of birds, the
young freshness of plants, and the noisy play of children, produce a
strange effect
upon an invalid. Or rather it was strange to me to be
looking at such things with the eyes of a sick and dying
man; it was
my first introduction to a new phase of experience. There is a deep
sadness in it. One feels one's
self cut off from nature—outside
her communion as it were. She is strength and joy and eternal health.
“Room
for the living,” she cries to us; “do not come to darken
my blue sky with your miseries; each has his turn:
begone!” But to
strengthen our own courage, we must say to ourselves, No; it is good
for the world to see
suffering and weakness; the sight adds zest to
the joy of the happy and the careless, and is rich in warning for
all who think. Life has been lent to us, and we owe it to our
traveling companions to let them see what use we
make of it to the
end. We must show our brethren both how to live and how to die. These
first summonses of
illness have besides a divine value; they give us
glimpses behind the scenes of life; they teach us something of
its
awful reality and its inevitable end. They teach us sympathy. They
warn us to redeem the time while it is
yet day. They awaken in us
gratitude for the blessings which are still ours, and humility for
the gifts which are
in us. So that, evils though they seem, they are
really an appeal to us from on high, a touch of God's fatherly
scourge.
How frail a thing is health, and what a
thin envelope protects our life against being swallowed up from
without, or disorganized from within! A breath, and the boat springs
a leak or founders; a nothing, and all is
endangered; a passing
cloud, and all is darkness! Life is indeed a flower which a morning
withers and the beat
of a passing wing breaks down; it is the
widow's lamp, which the slightest blast of air extinguishes. In order
to
realize the poetry which clings to morning roses, one needs to
have just escaped from the claws of that vulture
which we call
illness. The foundation and the heightening of all things is the
graveyard. The only certainty in
this world of vain agitations and
endless anxieties, is the certainty of death, and that which is the
foretaste and
small change of death—pain.
As long as we turn our eyes away from
this implacable reality, the tragedy of life remains hidden from us.
As
soon as we look at it face to face, the true proportions of
everything reappear, and existence becomes solemn
again. It is made
clear to us that we have been frivolous and petulant, intractable and
forgetful, and that we
have been wrong.
We must die and give an account of our
life: here in all its simplicity is the teaching of sickness! “Do
with all
diligence what you have to do; reconcile yourself with the
law of the universe; think of your duty; prepare
yourself for
departure:” such is the cry of conscience and of reason.
Amiel's Journal
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