If This Isn't Nice, What Is?

Our politicians like to say that we have religion and the communist countries don’t. I think it is just the other way around. Those countries have a religion called Communism, and the Free World is where sustaining religions are in very short supply.

Every country makes mistakes. Only profoundly free and honorable nations can admit they make them. Dictatorships never do.

I’ll pass on to you what another Methuselah said to me. He’s Joe Heller, author, as you know, of Catch-22. We were at a party thrown by a multi-billionaire out on Long Island, and I said, “Joe, how does it make you feel to realize that only yesterday our host probably made more money than Catch-22, one of the most popular books of all time, has grossed worldwide over the past forty years?” Joe said to me, “I have something he can never have.” I said, “What’s that, Joe?” And he said, “The knowledge that I’ve got enough.”

If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph: THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED OF THE EXISTENCE OF GOD WAS MUSIC.

For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings.

Notice when you’re happy, and know when you’ve got enough. As for throwing money at problems: that’s what money is for.

He said that when things are going really well we should be sure to notice it. He was talking about very simple occasions, not great victories. Maybe drinking lemonade under a shade tree, or smelling the aroma of a bakery, or fishing, or listening to music coming from a concert hall while standing in the dark outside, or, dare I say, after a kiss. He told me that it was important at such times to say out loud, “If this isn’t nice, what is?”

You’re as much Generation A as Adam and Eve were. As I read the book of Genesis, God didn’t give Adam and Eve a whole planet. He gave them a manageable piece of property, for the sake of discussion let’s say two hundred acres. I suggest to you Adams and Eves that you set as your goals the putting of some small part of the planet into something like safe and sane and decent order. There’s a lot of cleaning up to do. There’s a lot of rebuilding to do, both spiritual and physical. And, again, there’s going to be a lot of happiness. Don’t forget to notice!

Yet it seems to me that it’s no more trouble to be virtuous than to be vicious. I’m critical, but not a pessimist