Yes is a healthy response to the human condition. But as Robert Burns says to a mouse: “The best-laid schemes of mice and men oft go astray and leave us naught but grief and pain for promised joy.” We know now that a yes to life is a yes to grief and pain, since all the conditions of existence represent losses and disappointments. We can flow into the natural chaos of life-so untidy, so unpredictable-or we can try to order life fully by making careful plans. The unruly givens of life are permissions not to be perfect. Perfect discipline, or perfect control, is the best way to miss out on the joy of life. We may act with precision, and self-discipline, expecting the world to follow suit and grant us our reward. We are challenged by life’s “mind of its own” to let go of having things come out our way. Perhaps we fear natural happenings, things turning out contrary to our wishes. We make plans expecting to be in control of what will happen. Things don’t always go according to our plans, but a change of plans may be an example of synchronicity, the mysterious set of coincidental circumstances that lead us to a life fulfillment unguessed and unsought-other words for grace. Her original plans were dashed by a tragic event, but thereby she found her true calling. Her voice became so well trained that she was hired to sing in a band, and soon thereafter, she found parts in movies, changing her name to Doris Day. Doris, during her long homebound recuperation, began to sing along with the female vocalists on the radio. She had planned to go to Hollywood to become a dancer in films, but her injuries made that future no longer possible. "The greatest boon you can confer on me," said he, "is to let me live in a corner under the shadow of your fortune to spread wide the advantages of science and pray for your long life and prosperity." The boon was at once granted and at "Naishápur thus lived and died Omar Khayyám, busied," adds the Vizier, "in winning knowledge of every kind, and especially in astronomy, wherein he attained to a very high pre-eminence." Omar's Epicurean freedom of thought and expression rendered him the.In the early 1940s, on the night of her graduation party, a high school girl named Doris Van Kappelhoff was involved in a serious car accident. Omar, the poet, also presented himself, but not to claim title or office. His former friend at once recognised the claim, and had good cause to repent of his generosity ere long. Hassan speedily made his appearance, and claimed the fulfilment of the youthful vow. In the course of time the historian became administrator of affairs during the sultanate of Sultan Alp Arslán. "Well," he said, "let us make a vow that to whomsoever this fortune falls, he shall share it equally with the rest, and resume no pre-eminence for himself." This was agreed to. Now, if we all do not attain thereto, without doubt one of us will what, then, shall be our mutual pledge and bond?" "Be it what you please," was the answer. When the Imám rose from his lectures, the three invariably associated together and one day Hassan said to Nizám, and to the future poet-astronomer, "It is a universal belief that the pupils of the Imám Mowaffak will attain to fortune. His history is intimately connected with that of two individuals who were notorious in their time:-Nizám al Mulk, Vizier to Alp the Lion and Malik Shah, son and grandson of Toghrul Beg the Tartar, who wrested Persia from the successor of Mahmúd the Great, and founded that Seljukian dynasty which provoked Europe into the crusades, and Hassan al Sabbáh, so celebrated among the crusaders as "The Old Man of the Mountains." These three were fellow-students under the Imám Mowaffak, of Naishápur and, if we are to believe Nizám al Mulk, they made a mutual and romantic vow to benefit each other. He was much more celebrated for his astronomical and mathematical studies and acquirements than for his poetical powers and yet it would appear that his poems are the only remains which have been preserved to perpetuate his memory. We learn that he was born at Naishápúr, in Khorassán, in the latter half of the eleventh century, and died within the first quarter of the twelfth. Verbosity was certainly not one of his characteristics, and wanting this, he might possibly lack the passport to Oriental fame but if the astronomer-poet of Persia appears as well in his native garb as he appears in English, it was certainly high time that he should be brought out of his obscurity. Omar Khayyam is a Persian poet who is little known in Persia, and who is still less known in Europe. Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, the Astronomer-Poet of Persia.
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