Theodore Bikel was asked in Moment magazine’s May/June issue what wisdom he would pass on to the next generation. This is what he said:
“It has occurred to me that in this world so much is motivated by love of power. I would turn that adage around and say that power of love is what motivated me. The power of love still leads to peaceable solutions in a world that does not believe in peaceable solutions.
“Love and peace are the other side of the same coin in my world. This may sound namby-pamby but it is not. The determination of human beings to be more than simply their earthly bodies or their careers, their wants and desires, to aspire to a higher plane of thinking and feeling is what we do. But we sometimes forget. We keep on thinking about mundane things — our own lives, our ailments — rather than thinking of the nobler, higher purposes that we are here to propagate and cultivate.
“I love the notion of going through life and saying, ‘This is beautiful,’ seeing a flower or landscape and really taking in the beauty of the world. You need to think, you need to read, you need to take in a song or a beautiful landscape, and come away saying, ‘This was a worthwhile day, a worthwhile hour, a worthwhile minute.’ That is what we live for basically, those few worthwhile minutes of our lives that give us contentment and purpose.
“There are no shortcuts to what I am talking about. You have to work at it, you have to think it, you have to feel it. At the end of each day you have to think, ‘Did I really come up with something that made my day, that made this hour?’ We spend our entire lives doing a lot of crap, and to get away from the crap is one of the purposes of a higher plane of living. It is to get away to that one minute, that one second, and find the beauty. From my hospital bed, those are my words of wisdom.”
