Instead of a Letter

by Diana Athill

So I have not been beautiful, or intelligent, or good, or brave, or energetic, and for many years I was not happy: I failed to achieve the extremely simple things which, for so long, I wanted above all else: I found no husband and it is not likely that I shall ever have a child. There is plenty of evidence, then, that my existence has been without value: that if, like my grandmother, I approach death slowly and consciously, I shall be driven to ask the question she asked: ‘What have I lived for?’ All that I shall be able to answer is that I have written a little, and I have loved, and if I do not die until I am old, those things will have become too remote to count for much. I shall remember that they once seemed worth everything, but quite possibly the fact that by then they will be over will appear to have wiped out their value. It ought to be a frightening thought, but I am still not frightened. I was looking through a dictionary of quotations in search of a title for a friend’s play when I chanced on Carlyle and Ruskin, both saying something which caught my attention. Carlyle: ‘No most gifted eye can exhaust the significance of any object.’ Ruskin: ‘The greatest thing a human soul does in this world is to see.’