Living Dangerously - Issue 35

That which is with us still. That thought took me back to my visit with Wavy. We had been talking about ideas that really cooked (or "clicked," in modern parlance) -- about ideas that lasted. Wavy said, "Have you ever read 'The Joy of Cooking'?" "Definitely," I said. "Do you know how it begins?" he asked. "With recipes on first courses," I stupidly guessed. I'd "eaten" the book, but it was just one more experience that had passed through me.

Wavy didn't need to pull the book off his shelf. He had what he was searching for in his gut. "It starts with a line from Goethe," he said. "It starts as every book that is meant to feed you should start -- with a truth that you already know deep down. Goethe wrote, 'That which thy fathers have bequeathed to thee, earn it anew if thou wouldst possess it.' Strange what you'll find in a cookbook, isn't it?"

What you possess is what you can't get rid of. Try to think about what you possess and about what's worth possessing, not about what's next on a list of possible experiences or acquisitions. To lead in prosperous times, you must think about things that last. What we leave behind is what we take with us -- forever.

Harriet Rubin (hrubin@aol.com) is the author of "The Princessa: Machiavelli for Women" (Doubleday, 1997) and "Soloing: Realizing Your Life's Ambitions" (HarperCollins, 1999). She is also the director of Working Diva, a Web site on iVillage (www.ivillage.com/working diva).