Retrospective

When I look back on my life nowadays, which I sometimes do, what strikes me most forcibly about it is that what seemed at the time most significant and seductive, seems now most futile and absurd. For instance, success in all of its various guises, being known and being praised, ostensible pleasures, like acquiring money … going to and fro in the world and up and down it like Satan. … In retrospect all these exercises in self-gratification seem pure fantasy, what Pascal called “licking the earth.” They are diversions designed to distract our attention from the true purpose of our existence in this world, which is, quite simply, to look for God, and, in looking, to find him, and having found him, to love him, thereby establishing a harmonious relationship with his purposes for his creation..

Malcolm Muggeridge – English writer (1903-1990)