We do not really, in fact, believe in immortality, when we are
bound in the body--some few of us do, and many of us say that we do. But
we do not realise that the little life is but one in a great chain of
lives, that each spirit lives many times, over and over. There is no
such thing as waste or sacrifice of life. The life is meant to do just
what it does, no more and no less; bound in the body, it all seems so
long or so short, so complete or so incomplete; but now and here we can
see that the whole thing is so endless, so immense, that we think no
more of entering life, say, for a few days, or entering it for ninety
years, than we should think of counting one or ninety water-drops in the
river that pours in a cataract over the lip of the rocks. Where we do
lose, in life, is in not taking the particular experience, be it small
or great, to heart. We try to forget things, to put them out of our
minds, to banish them. Of course it is very hard to do otherwise, in a
body so finite, tossed and whirled in a stream so infinite; and thus we
are happiest if we can live very simply and quietly, not straining to
multiply our uneasy activities, but just getting the most and the best
out of the elements of life as they come to us.
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