EA - On Living by emre kaplan

The Nonlinear Library

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: On Living, published by emre kaplan on August 3, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum.
This is a famous Turkish poem by Nazım Hikmet. I just noticed its interesting overlap with some of the EA themes . Some here might find it motivating to read it. Translation by ChatGPT:
On Living
Living is no laughing matter:
you must live with great earnestness
like a squirrel, for example,
I mean without looking for something beyond and above living,
living must be your whole occupation.
Living is no laughing matter:
you must take it seriously,
so much so and to such a degree
that, for example, your hands tied behind your back,
your back to the wall,
or else in a laboratory
in your white coat and safety glasses,
you can die for people
even for people whose faces you've never seen,
even though nobody forced you to do so,
even though you know living
is the most real, the most beautiful thing.
I mean, 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.
II
Let's say we're seriously ill, need surgery
which is to say we might never get up
from the white table.
Even though it's impossible not to feel sad
about going a little too soon,
we'll still laugh at the jokes being told,
we'll look out the window to see if it's raining,
or still wait anxiously
for the latest news.
Let's say we're at the front
for something worth fighting for, say.
There, in the first offensive, on that very day,
we might fall on our face, dead.
We'll feel a strange, bitter anger,
yet we'll still be consumed with worry
about the war's outcome, which could drag on for years.
Let's say we're in prison
and close to fifty,
and we have eighteen more years, say,
before the iron doors will open.
We'll still live with the outside,
with its people and animals, struggle and wind
I mean with the outside beyond the walls.
I mean, however and wherever we are,
we must live as if we will never die.
III
This earth will grow cold,
a star among stars
and one of the smallest,
a gilded mote on blue velvet
I mean this, our great earth.
This earth will grow cold one day,
not like a block of ice
or a dead cloud even
but like an empty walnut it will roll along
in pitch-black space...
You must grieve for this right now
you have to feel this sorrow now
for the world must be loved this much
if you're going to say "I lived"...
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