This is a time when we traditionally think about our priorities in life, as we see in the new year. It's a time in my life when I am struggling to comprehend the actions of both family and strangers in the name of religion.
I have found these words comforting.
An essay by Albert Einstein entitled “The World as I see it“. Einstein said that he did not persue ease and happiness as ends in themselves, but followed the ideals of Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. He said that he occupied himself with the objective world and the eternally unattainable in the field of art and scientific endeavors in order to fill his life.
He describes a knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds.