About Secrets and Falling Tiles
卡罗尔·宾德 \/ Carroll Binder
“We are all at the mercy of a falling tile.” Julius Caesar reminds us in Thornton Wilder’s Ides of March. None of us knows at what hour something we may love may suffer some terrible blow by a force we can neither anticipate nor control.
Fifty-five years of living, much of the time in trouble centers of a highly troubled era, have not taught me how to avoid being hit by falling tiles. I have sustained some very severe blows. My mother died when I was three years old. My first-born son, a gifted and idealistic youth, was killed in the war. While I was still cherishing the hope that he might be alive, circumstances beyond my control made it impossible for me to continue work into which I had poured my heart’s blood for twenty years.
I speak of such things here in the hope of helping others to believe with me that there are resources within one’s grasp which enable one to sustain such blows without being crushed or embittered by them.
I believe the best hope of standing up to falling tiles is through developing a sustaining philosophy and state of mind all through life. I have seen all sorts of people sustain all sorts of blows in all sorts of circumstances by all sorts of faiths, so I believe anyone can find a faith that will serve his needs if he persists in the quest.
One of the best ways I know of fortifying oneself to withstand the vicissitudes of this insecure and unpredictable era is to school oneself to require relatively little in the way of material possessions, physical satisfactions or the praise of others. The less one requires of such things the better situated one is to stand up to changes of fortune.
I am singularly rich in friendships. Friends of all ages have contributed enormously to my happiness and helped me greatly in times of need. I learned one of the great secrets of friendship early in life—to regard each person with whom one associate