Words from Chekhov...

In all the houses and streets there is peace and quiet. Out of fifty thousand townsfolk there's not one ready to scream or protest aloud. We see people shopping for food in the market, eating by day, sleeping by night, talking their nonsense, marrying their wives, growing old, complacently dragging off their dead to the cemetery. But we have no eyes or ears for those who suffer. Life's real tragedies are enacted off stage. All is peace and quiet, the only protest comes from mute statistics: so many people driven mad, so many gallons of vodka drunk, so many children starved to death.

Oh yes, the need for such a system is obvious. Quite obviously, too, the happy man only feels happy because the unhappy man bears his burden in silence. And without that silence happiness would be impossible. It's collective hypnosis, this is. At the door of every contented, happy man there should be someone standing with a little hammer, someone to keep dinning into his head that unhappy people do exist- and that, happy though he may be, life will round on him sooner or later. Disaster will strike in the shape of sickness, poverty or bereavement. And no one will see him or hear him - just as he now has neither eyes nor ears for others. but there is no one with a hammer, and so the happy man lives happily away, while life's petty tribulations stir him gently, as the breeze stirs an aspen. And everything in the garden is lovely.

[...]

'Never give up, my dear Alyokhin,' he pleaded. 'Never let them drug you. While you're still young, strong and in good heart, never tire of doing good. There's no such thing- there need be no such thing- as happiness. And if life has any meaning and purpose, that meaning and purpose certainly aren't in our happiness, but in something higher and more rational. Do good.'

Anton Chekhov: 'Gooseberries'

Secret Millionaire

I've been watching this great programme on Channel 4 the last few weeks called 'Secret Millionaire'- the premise is that each week a millionaire goes to do voluntary work in some deprived area of Britain but is undercover. At the end of the 10 days the millionaire gives away money to the projects they have worked with. In a way, it's a gimmick, the amount of people they reach is small and the millionaires seem to get a lot of thanks for the 10,000s of pounds they give, even though it's a drop in the ocean of their fortunes. But I think it's got a really deep message. It highlights the incredible work so many voluntary organisations do and the secret suffering of many people living next door to us. Our neighbours. It gives the millionaires to be treated as 'normal', not seen for their money but for who they are. In each case, they have been transformed by the experience and not only give their money away but go away with plans to use their businesses for the good of society. Wallets and hearts with changed priorities.