Planet Planning

Covid Finger Painting

Thanks to Larry Herman sharing this image from:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/UUHystericalSocietyCoffeeHour

This is a proverb from the medieval Levent (Persian, Hebrew and Turkey) around 1200 AD. The proverb means that all material conditions, whether good or bad, are transient. This proverb has the ability to make the happy person sad and the sad person happy because of the realization that both the 'best and worst of times' will soon pass.

I love the quote and it is a prudent reminder for us all that regardless of how the serendipity of life has dealt with us, it will soon pass. It speaks to me that "Change is the one constant in the universe" and it aligns with what the poet Rudyard Kipling said in his poem "IF" ...

If you can meet with triumph and disaster

And treat those two imposters just the same

Looking around the web, what I have below is the best I can come up with in regard to its history ...

The legend of the quote finds its roots in the court of a powerful eastern Persian ruler who called his sages (wise men) to him, including the Sufi poet Attar of Nishapur, and asked them for one quote that would be accurate at all times and in all situations. The wise men consulted with one another, and threw themselves into deep contemplation, and finally came up with the answer ...

"this too, shall pass".

The ruler was so impressed by the quote that he had it inscribed in a ring.

The quote was popular in the first half of the 19th century particularly with the English poet Edward Fitzgerald and later being employed in a speech by Abraham Lincoln, in his address to the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society in 1859. He summed up the quote's impact so well by saying: