This is a reprint of the article “About Life” by Napoleon Hill.
Life, you can’t subdue me because I refuse to take your discipline too seriously.
When you try to hurt me, I laugh — and the laughter knows no pain.
I appreciate your joys wherever I find them;
your sorrows neither frighten nor discourage me,
for there is laughter in my soul.
Temporary defeat does not make me sad.
I simply set music to the words of defeat and turn it into a song.
Your tears are not for me, for I like laughter much better, and because I like it,
I use it as a substitute for grief and sorrow and pain and disappointment.
Life, you are a fickle trickster — don’t deny it.
You slipped the emotion of love into my heart
so that you might use it as a thorn with which to prick my soul —
but I learned to dodge your trap with laughter.
You tried to lure me with the desire for gold,
but I have fooled you by following the trail which leads to knowledge instead.
You induced me to build beautiful friendships —
then converted my friends to enemies so you may harden my heart,
but I sidestepped your figure on this by laughing off your attempts
and selecting new friends in my own way.
You caused men to cheat me at trade so I will become distrustful,
but I won again because I possess one precious asset which no man can steal —
it is the power to think my own thoughts and to be myself.
You threaten me with death, but to me death is nothing worse
than a long peaceful sleep, and sleep is the sweetest of human experiences
— excepting laughter.
You build a fire of hope in my heart, then sprinkle water on the flames,
but I can go you one better by rekindling the fire — and I laugh at you once more.
You have nothing that can lure me away from laughter,
and you are powerless to scare me into submission.
To a life of laughter, then, I raise my cup of cheer!
Laughing all the way, I celebrate your own Songs of Triumph in portrait form. Contact me here.
