What It Means - Day 294

Stop Being So Religious

What

Do sad people have in

Common?

It seems

They have all built a shrine

To the past

And often go there

And do a strange wail and

Worship.

What is the beginning of

Happiness?

It is to stop being

So religious

Like

That.

Hafiz

I'm sitting here looking through The Gift, a collection of Hafiz poems that I often use in class. This is a clean copy, and thus not the one with my innumerable scribbles all over it, but it's amazing how many of the poems I remember. This is one of my favorites. Yes, and I know that it seems strange that a historian by training would cull out a poem featuring the line: "It seems/They have all built a shrine/To the past" but it is the real deal. Naturally, it always brings me back to Marcus Aurelius and his admonition that we only control this moment in time, but yet so many people are trapped by something that happened in the past. In a larger sense I do think it speaks to one of failings as people of faith, in that we should be living this spiritual moment and not focusing on what someone said centuries ago.