Cervantes,?through Don Quixote, provides this 407-year-old bit of inspiration for diving into a new year in turbulent, consequential and complicated times:
?For come, tell me, can there be anything more delightful than to see, as it were, here now displayed before us a vast lake of bubbling pitch with a host of snakes and serpents and lizards, and ferocious and terrible creatures of all sorts swimming about in it, while from the middle of the lake there comes a plaintive voice saying: ?Knight, whosoever thou art who beholdest this dread lake, if thou wouldst win the prize that lies hidden beneath these dusky waves, prove the valour of thy stout heart and cast thyself into the midst of its dark burning waters, else thou shalt not be worthy to see the mighty wonders contained in the seven castles of the seven Fays that lie beneath this black expanse;? and then the knight, almost ere the awful voice has ceased, without stopping to consider, without pausing to reflect upon the danger to which he is exposing himself, without even relieving himself of the weight of his massive armour, commending himself to God and to his lady, plunges into the midst of the boiling lake, and when he little looks for it, or knows what his fate is to be, he finds himself among flowery meadows, with?which the Elysian fields are not to be compared.?
It?s a passage that?s been in my head since I heard it recited in stentorian tones in the mid 1970s by the remarkable Sears R. Jayne, a Brown University professor of comparative literature (emeritus for many years now), when I took his course in comparative Renaissance literature.
It came in handy around 1995, when I was wooing the woman who is now my wife (I still have the aging sheet on which I typed it).
This kind of exhortation feels right now, as well, whether your role in confronting global challenges, and opportunities, is as a scientist, communicator, inventor, teacher, student, elected leader or simply human being.
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