Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself
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EXCERPT Searching for the good life If I was going looking for meaning, I didn't want meaning that would betray other people, and I also didn't want it to betray me. I wanted it to last. Billy Rose wrote a song a long time ago that asked:
That was me. I didn't want to wake up someday and find that what had once given meaning to my life was as stale and tasteless as yesterday's gob of gum.... When I was young, I noticed that the Greeks had asked what the "good life" was, and their questions stuck in my mind. As I read more, I came across vastly different answers. There was Thomas Aquinas, who seemed to think a good life would be rewarded later; there was the ancient rabbi who said the reward of a good life is a good life; and there was Ernest Hemingway, who said if it feels good, it's good. There was a cacophony of opinion about what the good life was and what it was good for. Still, the question remained: We live. We die. What's in between? I had a feeling the answer would come to me if I listened in on the things I'd been telling myself. Not just in formal talks in front of crowds, but also in those chance moments on a walk, or driving in a car with a child, when the right words fell together and I said something I didn't know I knew. I picked up a pile of yellowed typewritten papers, moved over to an easy chair and started reading. And as I turned the pages, the gates opened and the memories flooded in. Excerpted from Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself by Alan Alda. Copyright © 2007 by Mayflower Productions, Inc. Reprinted with permission of Random House.
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