07 Aug When you are not servile, you are great! (WILHEM REICH)
I know you’re a decent, industrious, cooperative animal, comparable to a bee or an ant. All I’ve done is to lay bare the little man in you, who has been wrecking your life for thousands of years. You are great, little man, when you’re not mean and small. Your greatness, little man, is the only hope we have left. You’re great when you attend lovingly to your trade, when you take pleasure in carving and building and painting, in sowing and reaping, in the blue sky and the deer and the morning dew, in music and dancing, in your growing children, and in the beautiful body of your wife or husband; when you go to the planetarium to study the stars, to the library to read what other men and women have thought about life. You’re great when your grandchild sits on your lap and you tell him of times long past and look into the uncertain future with his sweet, childlike curiosity. You’re great, mother, when you lull your baby to sleep; when with tears in your eyes you pray fervently for his future happiness; and when hour after hour, year after year, you build this happiness in your child.
You’re great, little man, when you sing the good, warmhearted folk songs, or when you dance the old dances to the tune of an accordion, because folk songs are good for the soul, and they’re the same the world over. And you’re great when you say to your friend:
“I thank my fate that I’ve been able to live my life free from filth and greed, to see my children grow and to look on as they first began to babble, to take hold of things, to walk, to play, to ask questions, to laugh and to love; that I’ve been able to preserve, in all its freedom and purity, my feeling for the springtime and its gentle breezes, for the gurgling of the brook that flows past my house and the singing of the birds in the woods; that I’ve taken no part in the gossip of malicious neighbors; that I’ve been happy in the embrace of my wife or husband and have felt the stream of life in my body; that I haven’t lost my bearings in troubled times, and that my life has had meaning and continuity. For I have always hearkened to the gentle voice within me that said, ‘Only one thing matters: live a good, happy life. Do your heart’s bidding, even when it leads you on paths that timid souls would avoid. Even when life is a torment, don’t let it harden you.'”
When on quiet evenings after the day’s work I sit om the meadow outside the house with my beloved or my child, alert to the breathing of nature, then a song that I love rises up in me, the song oh humanity and its future: “Seid umschlungen, Millionen . . .” And then I implore this life to claim its rights and change the hearts of cruel or frightened men who unleash wars. They do it only because life has escaped them. And I hug my little boy, who says to me, “Father! The sun has gone away. Where has the sun gone? Will it come back soon?” And I say, “Yes, my boy, the sun will come back soon with its kindly warmth.”
I have come to the end of my appeal to you, little man. I could have gone on indefinitely. But if you’ve read my words attentively and candidly, you will be able to recognize the little man in you even in connections I haven’t mentioned. For one and the same state of mind is at the bottom of all your mean actions and thoughts.
Regardless of what you’ve done and will do to me, of whether you glorify me as a genius or lock me up as a madman, of whether you worship me as your deliverer or hang or torture me as a spy, your affliction will force you to recognize sooner or later that I have discovered the laws of living energy and have given you an instrument with which to govern your lives with the conscious purpose which thus far you have applied only to the operation of machines. I have been a faithful engineer to your organism. Your grandchildren will follow in my footsteps and become wise engineers of human nature. I have opened up to you the vast realm of the living energy within you, your cosmic essence. That is my great reward.
Listen, Little man!
WILHEM REICH
