Grateful To The Gods

When you wake up in the morning tell yourself

The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful

Arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly

They are like this because they can't tell good from evil

But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil

And I recognize that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own

Not of the same blood or birth, but the same mind

And possessing a share of the divine

So none of them can hurt me, no one can implicate me in ugliness

Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him

We were born to work together like feet, hands and eyes

Like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower

To obstruct each other is unnatural, to feel anger at someone

To turn your back on them: These are obstructions

Discard your thirst for books so you won't die in bitterness

But in cheerfulness and truth

Grateful to the gods from the bottom of your heart

Grateful to the gods from the bottom of your heart

Whatever this is that I am, it is flesh, a little spirit and intelligence

Throw away your books, stop letting yourself be distracted, that is not allowed

Instead, as if you were dying right now, despise your flesh

Mess of blood and pieces of bones

A woven tangle of nerves, veins, arteries

Consider what the spirit is: Air; and never the same air

But vomited out and gulped in again every instant

Finally the intelligence, think of it this way: You are an old man

Stop allowing your mind to be a slave, to be jerked about by selfish impulses

To kick against fate and the present, trust the future

What is divine is full of providence, even chance is not divorced from nature

For the in-weaving and in-folding of things governed by providence

Everything precedes from it

And then there is necessity and the needs of the whole world

Of which you are a part

Whatever the nature of the whole does

Or whatever serves to maintain it, is good for every part of nature

The world is maintained by change and the elements

Within the things that they compose

That should be enough for you, treat this an axiom

Discard your thirst for books so you won't die in bitterness

But in cheerfulness and truth

Grateful to the gods from the bottom of your heart

Grateful to the gods from the bottom of your heart

(Oh! What a glorious thing. Waking up in the morning baby

(Oh! What a glorious thing. Get to have a whole day!)

Discard your thirst for books so you won't die in bitterness

But in cheerfulness and truth

Grateful to the gods from the bottom of your heart

Grateful to the gods from the bottom of your heart

Remember how long you've been putting this off

How many extensions the gods gave you, and you didn't use them

At some point you've got to recognize what world it is that you belong to

What power rules it, and from what source you spring?

That there is a limit to the time assigned to you and if you don't use it to free yourself

It will be gone and will never return