But now that so much is changing,
is it not up to us to change?
Could we not try to evolve just a little,
and gradually take upon ourselves
our share of the labor of love?
We have been spared all of its toil,
and so it has slipped in among
our amusements,
as a scrap of lace
will occasionally fall
into a child’s toy-box,
and give pleasure, and cease to give pleasure,
and at length lie there
among broken
and dismembered things,
worse than all the rest.
We have been spoiled by easy gratification,
like all dilettantes,
and are held to be masters.
But what if we despised our successes?
What if we begin to learn, from the very start,
the labor of love that has always been done for us?
What if we were to go and become beginners,
now that so much is changing?
—Ranier Maria Rilke, The Notebook of Malte Laurids Brigge: A Novel
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