A woman in [in Vicksburg, MS during the Federal siege] reflected that the oddest thing of all was that as far as nature was concerned this was just another spring--birds were singing, building nests, and raising other birds, flower gardens were full of bright blossoms, and the air was all scented with the odor of jasmine and honeysuckle. ...People in besieged cities have talked much this way, probably, since the days of Jericho. Catton, Never Call Retreat, In Letters of Blood, "All or Nothing", 205.
You do hear similar things all the time. I earnestly asked my mother once what it was like living through the Depression. "Oh Benjamin, we were so poor we didn't notice there was a Depression." :) :) :) Our species seems always--"since the days of Jericho,"--to have had the capacity to see beauty amidst ugliness and to feel unalterably that life, any life, is better than the alternative. There is an indestructible kernel of happiness in the deepest depths of humanity's turbulent soul, and a tenacious will to live.
You do hear similar things all the time. I earnestly asked my mother once what it was like living through the Depression. "Oh Benjamin, we were so poor we didn't notice there was a Depression." :) :) :) Our species seems always--"since the days of Jericho,"--to have had the capacity to see beauty amidst ugliness and to feel unalterably that life, any life, is better than the alternative. There is an indestructible kernel of happiness in the deepest depths of humanity's turbulent soul, and a tenacious will to live.
