"The Great Encounter"

A Giant Ass Quote From Someone Who Said It Better Than I Ever Could

Every so often I come across a quote that just smacks me in the face. I could sum it up for you or use just a portion of it and surround it with my own thoughts. I don't mind using other people's brilliance to spearhead my agenda. What I'm going to do here is just reproduce an entire section for you. It is something I think should be read. This quote has inspired me, on more than one occasion it has roused me from my contented slumber.

Some time ago I picked up a book called "The Oedipus Plays of Sophocles". This is the entire trilogy: Oedipus The King, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone. The translation was done by a man named Paul Roche. This was published in 1958. The Foreword is the section I am leaving below. Everything in bold is as it appeared in the book.

I consider this to be a timely and timeless observation, holding relevance as long as human beings roam the earth.


THE GREAT ENCOUNTER

Sophocles, who died at the age of nearly ninety, two thousand three hundred and sixty-four years ago, was one of the world's greatest poets and dramatists, and he speaks to us today with a message no less necessary and elevating than it was to the Greeks of the fifth century B.C. We too need to be told that man is but a limited and contingent creature, subject to sudden disrupting forces. Success is not finally to be measured by fame or material prosperity. Human greatness consists ultimately in nobly accepting the responsibility of being what we are; human freedom, in the personal working out of our fate in terms appropriate to ourselves. Though we may be innocent, we are all potentially guilty, because of the germ of self-sufficiency and arrogance in our nature. We must remember always that we are only man and be modest in our own conceits. Our place in the total pattern of the cosmos is only finite. That is not to say that it may not be glorious. Whatever our circumstances, we can achieve and endure through to essential greatness. It is not what fate has in store for us that matters, but what we do with it when it comes. There may be suffering, but no abiding hopelessness. No power, no imposition, no catastrophe, can uproot the personal dignity of each human being. The seeming caprice and unfairness of life, striking some down and pampering others, is only the beginning of the Great Encounter. Both the choice and the destiny are ours.

Paul Roche
Smith College
Northampton
May 1, 1958