To Thrive In An Unfair World, Don’t Be A Miser: The Treasure and The Two Men
Conversation got a little heavy at the breakfast table the other day. I was telling my partner about a book I was reading by Phillippe Lançon, one of the survivors of the terrorist attack at the Charlie Hebdo newspaper offices on January 7, 2015. Next thing we knew we were revisiting the November 13, 2015 attack at the Bataclan concert venue, which we experienced from a restaurant only a few hundred meters away (and which I wrote about here: A Paris Weekend In November). Then it was Kikkan Randall’s cancer, discovered only months after she won a gold medal for cross country skiing at the 2018 Winter Olympics.
Life’s randomness can terrify me over my oatmeal. Fortune toys with us.
A man who was without credit or resources, the devil in his wallet — that is to say, with nothing in his wallet — thought he would do well to hang himself and put an end to his misery. After all, if he didn’t, then hunger would get him soon enough. And that’s a death of limited appeal to people who have little desire to taste death in advance.
With this intention, he chose an old shack to set the scene of his adventure. He brought a rope and went about hammering a nail high up on the wall where he wanted to attach the noose. The wall, old and dilapidated, fell down at the first hammer…
