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Quote of the Day: Planting the Almond Tree
“Look, one day I had gone to a little village. An old grandfather of ninety was busy planting an almond tree. ‘What, grandfather!’ I exclaimed. ‘Planting an almond tree?’ And he, bent as he was, turned around and said: ‘My son, I carry on as if I should never die.’ I replied: ‘And I carry on as if I was going to die any minute.’” – Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek
These are troubled times. We have had several threads here on Ricochet wondering whether the United States will dissolve into chaos in the next year or the one after that. I have been seeing those kinds of conversations on other blogs I frequent. And yes, I believe it could happen, and have written about getting prepared.
Equally, it may happen a lot later than expected. Or never happen. So how do you carry on in the meantime?
The old grandfather in this quote will almost certainly never enjoy the fruit of the almond tree he is planting. Yet he might. Even if he doesn’t he knows his family will. So he continues on as he has for nine decades, planting for the next season. (And yes, I believe a 90-year-old Greek farmer could do this. They were tough old birds. My Greek grandparents all lived into their late 80s and were active until then. My parents lived into their 90s, and dad was figuratively planting almond trees in the last three years of his life.)
I must come from the tradition of the old grandfather. I am pretty sure the wheels will all come off before 2025. Despite that, I took a job last year working on a lunar project that will not be launched until 2025 (and more realistically, 2027). I do not plan to quit that job, even though I don’t need the salary. It is worth doing. It is fun. The books I write are my almond trees. I continue planting almond trees, despite my pessimism about the future. I am still negotiating and signing contracts for future books, to be written next year and the year after. My writing calendar is pretty well full through the middle of 2024.
Why? Why not? If the worst happens, it happens. I have made my preparations and am content to await events. If the worst fails to happen, I have set things up so that I am using the time I have in a creative and constructive way.
How about you? My advice: plant the almond tree.
Published in Group Writing
Politicians, bureaucrats and giant digital companies are likely to consolidate the top and that, even without the Chinese and Soros trying to destroy us, will end the Republic. We have options. The same one our founders took, separate. The Chinese will destroy us if we don’t and we might save a Republic if we do. But we can’t sit around and think about it until we see that they’ve stolen the presidency again. The option should be discussed in the Presidential debate immediately after they steal the congressional elections. If they fail to steal the congressional elections, then we’re back in a more traditional political struggle but the focus must be on what the Chinese are doing everywhere. We can’t pass meaningful legislation so we stop legislation and focus on the threats to the Republic, internal and external.
As the song goes: Hope for the best. Expect the worst.
Yes, Commentary Magazine has the best podcast theme music, courtesy of Mel Brooks.
I now live from day to day. Take photos of beautiful things in the environment and post them on my personal blog. Update my resume, and look for a new job, even at my advanced age of 73. I signed up for a bunch of market-research sites, and I do surveys nearly every day. Next week, I get to participate in a Zoom focus-group, the subject being Covid vaccines. I can hardly wait for that one, and I get paid for my time. I am now on YouGov’s list, and I am quite happy to now be a statistic for conservative polling.
I intend to work the general election in November for my county, just like I did in 2020. They don’t open up for applications until October 1, but I will sure apply first thing, and since I have experience I will probably get to do it again. We have all-mail voting in WA, and I will try to do signature-verification again this year. I know that my vote counts for nothing here in “Abortion Central”, but we vote anyway.
You know what really bothers me about you always warning about the Chinese? It brings up a sore spot with me. It’s that when it’s all said, done and weighed, there was a Chinese defector, Xu Junping, the highest ranked Chinese military officer ever to have defected, a security and spy director, and he defected to the US in Dec. 2020, only to the DIA!, because he knew the profession and no other agency would do, and he had knowledge of the identity of every Chinese spy and spy organization on the US, and he carried with him 4 terabytes of information — including the origins of the Wuhan Virus — and his defection was kept a secret from everyone, even the CIA, for months and months as he was debriefed and his information corroborated, and this wasn’t reported publicly until June 2021 — and nothing has been heard since about any arrests or interrupted spy networks or anything.
If he and his 4 terabytes have been lost along with Hillary’s e-mails, and Wiener’s laptop, and Hunter’s laptop, and now the Russia Hoax documents, it’s just treason. And it’s very disheartening.
And now it looks like Biden’s son is being phased out and Nancy’s son is taking up the reins as China’s favorite foreign son.
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More on-topic, we just finished the second season of delicious mangoes from a tree my wife planted from a seed.
“In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. ‘How are we to live in an atomic age?’ I am tempted to reply: ‘Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.’
In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.
This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.”
C.S. Lewis, 1948
The Talmud (Ta’anis 23b) relates an interesting incident about the sage Choni HaM’agel (who once prayed for rain during a drought and refused to move from within a circle until the rain came – which it did). ” R’ Yochanan said: This righteous man [Choni] was throughout his whole life troubled about the meaning of the verse (Psalms 126), A Song of Ascents, When Hashem will return the captivity of Zion, we will be like dreamers.’ Is it possible for a man to dream continuously for seventy years? (length of Babylonian captivity after Holy Temple’s destruction in 586 BC) One day he was journeying on the road and he saw a man planting a carob tree; he asked him, How long does it take [for this tree] to bear fruit? The man replied: Seventy years. He then further asked him: Are you certain that you will live another seventy years? The man replied: I found [ready grown] carob trees in the world; as my forefathers planted these for me so I too plant these for my children.
Choni sat down to have a meal and sleep overcame him. As he slept a rocky formation enclosed upon him which hid him from sight and he continued to sleep for seventy years. When he awoke he saw a man gathering the fruit of the carob tree and he asked him,”Are you the man who planted the tree?” The man replied: “I am his grandson.” Thereupon he exclaimed: “It is clear that I slept for seventy years.”
torah.org
It has been said that the Rip Van Winkle story is based on the above.
Apparently Ben Shapiro has said, relax, China is going to die. He’s right, of course, unless the current leader is replaced or dies very soon and they develop a competitive economy, but failing that, what it means is that the Chinese have urgency to bring us down and Biden, their controlled stooge, has less than three years so they’ll not sit around waiting. It’s not that they’re going to die, they will have to return to a more overtly top down totalitarianism, which will work for them, only if the US ceases to be a robust competitor. What this means is that we have to get rid of Biden as quickly as possible so what’s going on becomes visible even to those who choose not to see anything.
If you’re raising children, as I am, I don’t see how you can do anything other than “plant the almond tree.” Everything I do is maintaining as much order today so that my efforts yield fruit tomorrow and for years to come. I guess that’s why having a child is an optimistic act.
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This post of part of the Quote of the Day (QOTD) group writing project. If you would like to share a quote with or without your own commentary, please pick an unclaimed date on the August QOTD Signup Sheet. The links to the previous month of QOTD posts can be accessed here.