Meeting with Simone de Beauvoir

Pankaj Sharma : Simone de Beauvoir says “I am awfully greedy; I want everything from life. I want to be a woman and to be a man, to have many friends and to have loneliness, to work much and write good books, to travel and enjoy myself, to be selfish and to be unselfish… You see, it is difficult to get all which I want. And then when I do not succeed I get mad with anger.”

I met her in Paris in 1983 as a very young journalist and she must be around 75 that time. It was a very brief meeting like a ‘darshan’ sort of thing. Remembering her because this is the month of her birth. I feel that it is one’s conscience which is the measure of the honesty of selfishness so one must listen to it carefully. Everyone must decide whether he / she will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness. But, selfishness must always be forgiven, because there is no hope of a cure. We are child of God. Our playing small does not serve the world. We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when people are afraid of the light.

पत्रकार और नेता पंकज शर्मा के फेसबुक वॉल से.