Knowledge,love and compassion

Three passions have governed my life:
The longings for love, the search for knowledge,
And unbearable pity for the suffering of [humankind].

Love brings ecstasy and relieves loneliness.
In the union of love I have seen
In a mystic miniature the prefiguring vision
Of the heavens that saints and poets have imagined.

With equal passion I have sought knowledge.
I have wished to understand the hearts of [people].
I have wished to know why the stars shine.

Love and knowledge led upwards to the heavens,
But always pity brought me back to earth;
Cries of pain reverberated in my heart
Of children in famine, of victims tortured
And of old people left helpless.
I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot,
And I too suffer.

This has been my life; I found it worth living.
Bertrand Russell

Death is a friend

Together we were in that hall of sisterhood, you were that small sister, shy and witty or that small woman, bold and loud. 

I must have told you my name, my memory is unsure even though it was yesterday. 

Now you are gone faraway from the earth, I just want to know, how it looks like overthere. 

Did I smile to you while we were together?

Did I tell you how much you meant to me as a sister? 

I barely recall your face but I know we met. Did I say thank you when you gave me the bread? 

Were you the one who served me the soup? I am sorry, because I forgot to say thank you.

Is it you that I thought was so special? 

Maybe you were that sister I kept staring at. 

I am sorry, if I ignored you. Is life worth all our aches and pain? Or did you realise that we wasted our time? 

Does it rain overthere and is the sun as bright? 

When they told me you died yesterday, those were the questions, I wished I had asked you. 

We were sisters before, we would remain sisters forvever.