It is in vain that doctors prolong life if we spend the extra time being anxious to live still longer. It is in vain that engineers devise faster and… - Alan Watts

"It is open to all of us in so far as "the mastery of life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced." It is given to many to be seers, but few to be prophets. Many can listen to music, but few can perform and compose."

But you cannot understand life and its mysteries as long as you try to grasp it. Indeed, you cannot grasp it, just as you cannot walk off with a river in a bucket. If you try to capture running water in a bucket, it is clear that you do not understand it and that you will always be disappointed, for in the bucket the water does not run. To “have” running water you must let go of it and let it run.

For there are fashions in myth, and the world-conquering West of the nineteenth century needed a philosophy of life in which realpolitik — victory for the tough people who face the bleak facts — was the guiding principle. Thus the bleaker the facts you face, the tougher you seem to be.