I started reading Robert Reich’s new book, Coming Up Short, yesterday, and had a hard time putting it down. (No, this is not a paid promotion — I have an actual point to make.)

First, I skipped ahead to his chapter on growing old, and found that he and I share a great many of the . . . well, let’s call them inconveniences . . . of aging. However, he seems to bear them with a great deal more grace and humor than I do. In any event, it’s always comforting to know that you’re not alone in your misery.

Then I returned to the front of the book, and was just 35 pages in when I discovered that he — or, rather, his late father — and I had something else in common: a favorite quotation.

I hadn’t thought about this one in a while, which is surprising in view of the current state of the world, and my creeping suspicion that my inevitable mortality might not be something to dread after all:

“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time.
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

– William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act V, Scene 5

*. *. *

My old friend Will also lived in politically and economically difficult times (despite the cultural Renaissance), and understood that we humans continue, generation after generation and century after century, to learn nothing from our past mistakes. And from that realization, he drew the conclusion that all of the “sound and fury” we create in our one short lifetime is, in the end, useless.

Depressing thoughts, yes. But then I remembered that Shakespeare wrote those words of dread and doom some 400 years ago . . . and the world is still here. In those four centuries, we have survived countless wars and revolutions, dictators and despots, deadly pandemics, and unspeakable natural disasters.

But in between the bad times, there have been some really good ones: the United States was founded, and taught the world about democracy; the Industrial Revolution brought us astonishing, life-enriching inventions and discoveries; both World Wars, while horrific in themselves, were ultimately won by the good guys; many once-deadly diseases can now be prevented, controlled, or cured.

And who can forget the Jazz Age, the Big Band Era, or the likes of Elvis, the Beatles, and Queen? Or four centuries of geniuses such as Van Gogh, Mozart, and Dostoevsky? Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt? Eleanor Roosevelt and Ruth Bader Ginsburg? Charlie Chaplin and Robin Williams?

What about 400 years of sunrises and sunsets, the ebb and flow of ocean tides, spring blossoms and the fiery leaves of autumn, the smell of new-fallen snow or fresh-baked bread, or the cry of a newborn?

Need I go on? Those are just a few of the good things, the things that make life worth living and fighting for. So perhaps this time, instead of Shakespeare, I should dwell on another favorite quote: the words of Dylan Thomas as he contemplated the inevitable loss of his aging father:

“Do not go gentle into that good night:
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

*. *. *

Because this, too, shall pass.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
8/12/25