Life is Wonderful!
-------------------
[Original by Anton Chekhov 1885 - I have added some footnotes for
clarification]

Life is quite an unpleasant business, but it is not so very hard to
make it wonderful. For which purpose it is not enough that you should
win 200,000 roubles in a lottery, or receive the order of the White
Eagle, or marry a beautiful woman - all these blessings are
transitory and are liable to become a habit. But to feel continuously
happy, even in moments of distress and sorrow, the following is
needed:

(a) To be satisfied with your present state;

(b) To rejoice in the knowledge that things could be much worse


NEED CONVICING? Here are Anton's EVERYDAY EXAMPLES...
=====================================================

**1** When your matches suddenly go off in your pocket, rejoice and
offer thanks to heaven that your pocket is not a gunpowder magazine!

NOTE 1: "matches" = 19th century version of a lighter - you remember
lighters? - the things that smokers carried in the old days before
smoking became dastardly antisocial.

NOTE 2: "gunpowder magazine" = a dastardly antisocial device in the
old days, before suicide bombing was invented.


**2** When your relatives come to pay you a visit during your holiday, don't
turn pale, but exclaim triumphantly: "How very
lucky it is not the police!"

NOTE: "relatives" and "police" can be swopped over if that would make
this example more meaningful for you!


**3** If you get a splinter in your finger, rejoice that it is not in
your eye!

NOTE: "finger" and "eye" can be swopped over if you could really use
a sick note just now.


**4** If your wife and sister-in-law practises scales on the piano,
don't lose your temper, but be grateful for the joy that you are listening to
music, and not to the howling of jackals, or to a cat's concert.

NOTE: Yes, you are getting the idea now - "howling of jackals" can be
swopped over too!


**5** Rejoice that you are not a tram-horse, nor a Koch bacillus, nor
a trichina [a parasite of pigs], nor a pig, nor an ass, nor a bear lead by a
gipsy, nor a bug.

NOTE: Scratch this example if, like me, your income tax return is
overdue to the point of being severely fined.


**6** Rejoice that at the moment you are not a prisoner in the dock;
that you are not interviewing your creditors, and that you have not to
arrange the question of fees with Turba, the editor.

NOTE: This could be deemed a trifle insensitive for those of us who
are in the terminal (insanity and seizures) stage of advanced
syphilis.


**7** If you can live in a place not so remote as Siberia, can't you
feel pleased at the idea, that by mere chance you might have been deported
there?

NOTE: An excellent point for Russians to take on board! - with the
possible exception for those who dwelt in the neighbourhood of
Chernobyl.


**8** If you have pain in one tooth, rejoice that it is not all your
teeth that are aching.

NOTE: ...and that you are saving lots of money on those horrendous
private dentistry bills!


**9** Rejoice that you can afford not to read the 'Daily Citizen';
that you do not have to drive a sewage cart, nor to be married to three women
simultaneously.

NOTE: The 'Daily Citizen' was of course bought out by Rupert Murdoch and renamed
"The Sun", but the linking to sewage carts is probably still valid.


**10** If you are removed to a police cell, jump for joy that it is
not the "Fiery Gehenna" that you have been taken to.

NOTE: According to the Holy Russian Orthodox scriptures, the "Fiery Gehenna" is
a very nasty formulation of "hell"....

"...With their precipitation into Gehenna will end all seductions, violence,
lies and every evil in the world, and eternal blessedness of the saved will
begin."

NOTE: Presumably this is a reference to the ending of the TV
series "Big Brother"?


**11** If you are flogged with a birch rod, kick your legs in
rapture, and exclaim: "How very happy I am that it is not nettles I am being
flogged with!"

NOTE: A century after the Marquis de Sade, the popularity of S&M was
still growing, but not yet, it seems, totally out-of-hand. Nowadays,
disciples of the Marquis would no doubt choose one of these as the
main course and the other as (just)dessert(s).

The Marquis, it should be remembered, spent 32 years of his life in
various prisons plus an insane asylum and at death went to eternal
damnation in the "Fiery Gehenna" - still, everyone needs a hobby - it's your
choice!


**12** If your wife has been unfaithful to you, rejoice that she has
betrayed merely yourself, and not your country.

NOTE: Oh dear, Mr. Chekhov, you would be shocked at how times have
changed!

The 2007 version of this is: "If find out that your partner is a Russian spy,
and you of course work for MI6, then be extremely glad that the company
healthcare plan included a check on your genital polonium level!"


[The original text above is from "Plays and Stories by Anton Tchekhov" (aka
"Chekhov"):
http://www.Amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0000CK273/sunflowerheal-21]