Live your Life

However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun¹（回避） it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor-house. The setting sun（落日） is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brightly as from the rich man's abode²（住处） ; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly³ there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace. The town's poor seem to me often to live the most independent lives of any. May be they are simply great enough to receive without misgiving⁴（担忧，疑虑） . Most think that they are above being supported by the town; but it often happens that they are not above supporting themselves by dishonest means, which should be more disreputable（声名狼藉的） . Cultivate poverty like a garden herb（香草，药草） , like sage⁵（圣人，哲人） . Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends, Turn the old, return to them. Things do not change; we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.