Saturday 21 April 2018

In Play At Little Games


These are the final lines of a poem written in 1938 by Robert D Abrahams. He is reflecting on wars around the world whilst he and his wife, safe at home,  drive to a game of bridge:

Tonight Shanghai is burning,
And we are dying too.
What bomb more surely mortal
Than death inside of you?

For some men die by shrapnel,
And some go down in flames,
But most men perish inch by inch,
In play at little games.

The words are a challenge to every one of us. Will we allow ourselves to die inch by inch? Or will we determine to live for a cause? Will we allow others to play little games with our lives? Or will we ignore the fear of shrapnel and fight?

May every one of us reading these words determine to live; and to live for something great, something lasting, something meaningful.


2 comments:

Unknown said...

Love this, Ralph. My "something lasting" is hopefully going to be contributing to getting a British pensions dashboard up and running. I think it could be a really wonderful thing for the citizens of the UK, although incredibly tricky to do. See my blog on the topic at http://www.dashboardideas.co.uk/. Would be good to chat sometime. Cheers, Richard Smith.

Ralph Turner said...

Thanks for this Richard. I'm a big supporter of the dashboard. As you say on your blog, it's instinctively the right thing to do. There are others at work in this area, but if I can help- let me know!