My favorite 10 quotes from my father, Count Arthur Tarnowski
Today has been my father’s 93rd birthday. We have been remembering him at home in Ibiza. It’s been beautiful to share stories of about my daughters Grandfather. Connecting with my father’s love through my love of my daughter. In tribute of his birthday I have curated 10 pieces of his wisdom:
- On giving love:
“To love is to yearn to give love; to give of the Self, of this heart stripped bare into the vulnerability of its sears and failures — down to the sublimity of its spirit. And upon such exquisite foreplay attain union. Union of two hearts thirsting the divine thirst to give themselves. In their union lose themselves, in union emblazon themselves. And in this orgasm create each other into life sublime.”
2. On giving of self:
‘There’s much that overlaps in loving and giving. The only thing I truly possess, I claim, is that which I’ve given away. By which I don’t mean that my possessions consist of the sum-total of presents I ever gave. No, what I refer to is the content of the self, what I pour of my inner self into each gift I make. The higher the gift’s content in the self which my heart thrusts into it, spiritually the richer I become. Pari Passu.”
Read more in the Joy of Giving: https://luciant.medium.com/the-joy-of-giving-heart-gift-88b54596e8a8
3. On life as an adventure:
“To journey, to witness — in heart’s freedom and wonderment, to reach out across far horizons beyond the murky confines of parochial mediocrity — ’tis to LIVE, ’tis to LOVE.”
Words to live by: https://luciant.medium.com/heart-gift-14-words-to-live-by-22c0fd58764e
4. On desert symphonies:
‘On another occasion, I lugged a gramophone into the desert outside Bagdad to play Beethoven’s Fifth and Seventh Symphonies at full volume. The cascades of sound billowed across the solitude, impassive, enduring, as the dunes surged and rippled into the distance, into the expanses of grandeur. As if both were drawn from the Absolute, the sound and the stillness coalesced to conjure up moments of that rare ecstatic rapture, when one’s spirit transcends time and identity to partake of the Divine.’
Beethoven in the desert: https://medium.com/@luciant/heart-gift-20-beethoven-in-the-desert-9b69a3b9d957
5. On language:
‘Language is the unwitting culprit — and the life-sucking harpies of lassitude. To be intelligible words must convey concepts fixed and circumscribed — but in a deeper sense eventually dead, dead to heart’s afflatus.’
Reflections on language: https://medium.com/@luciant/heart-gift-my-fathers-reflections-on-language-d02dd98f4918
6. On consciousness of birth:
By virtue of being given love elevates and purifies one’s spirit, ennobles it, bestows harmony and fulfillment onto the consciousness of ‘I know why I be born.’
My father’s last letter: https://medium.com/@luciant/heart-gift-10-my-fathers-last-letter-804b2e8639a8
7. On transforming society:
‘Help and alleviation of this wretchedness can come essentially from a better understanding of its causes, nature and extent, and in this every one of us can help, can contribute his humble little brick.’
My father’s letter in 1953 on social injustice: https://medium.com/@luciant/heart-gift-8-our-humble-little-bricks-a-letter-from-1953-3cbe5a444133
8. On Anandwan and Baba Amte:
‘The essential realisation of what Anandwan stands for was realised through no other than the power of pure love, of active compassion, of the creativity in giving. And there is no otherworldly aspect to this since Baba Amte, if born a Hindu, does not practice his religion. I ask you, isn’t it all too seldom that we may encounter such manifest transformation in people’s minds and hearts, in their welfare and in the scale of attainment generated by the powers latent in human love and compassion? A profoundly uplifting and inspiring scene to virtually all of us.’
On Baba Amte and Anandwan: https://luciant.medium.com/heart-gift-12-take-heart-baba-amte-and-anandwan-c612ca3f251d
9. On heart’s beating in unison:
‘All I can assert in unquibbled assurance about my story with the bustee people of Calcutta is this:- In this Gehenna, as nowhere else, I met a man who gave me half his worldly goods and delighted over it; there I had heard more laughter, spontaneous, unaffected laughter, than in the salons of Paris, London or New York; and I left the place in spirit enriched, humbled in flesh. And there, amidst the midden-heaps, the suffering, that sore-blown desolation, a man had told me with utter conviction:- “God good, life good, eat!”. What triumphant affirmation of Man, the glory of Man Alive…”
Dad’s reflection after sleeping on the streets of Calcutta with Ramu: https://luciant.medium.com/heart-gift-2-when-our-hearts-beat-in-unison-spending-five-days-in-the-slums-of-calcutta-75d9e92af4bb
10. On purpose of life:
“Panache and fantaisie have been foremost in directing my steps across life… To drink deep of the bitter-sweet cup of life. To seek out its challenges and measure oneself against them. To dream its wondrous dreams. To scale its peaks. To stride through like with eyes of zest and wonder. And youth of heart. Nothing stands ‘larger than life’, for life is as large as one’s urge, vision and daring forge it.
Chase butterflies and dream and wonder. Reach out for the stars. Avec panache et fantaisie. Sunlight in my lungs, marvel in my eyes. It is in this spirit that I went up the Himalayas and thumbed my nose at the wheelchair.”
My father’s reflections on the beauty of life: https://luciant.medium.com/heart-gift-1-my-fathers-reflections-on-the-beauty-of-life-d1420e2ef55e
My father was my best friend and teacher. I live in deep gratitude for the foundational lessons he taught me and lived by example. He was a truly remarkable person and father. Both he and my mother are enormous sources of inspiration for me while my love for my daughter and the planet is my driving motivation for United Planet. I wrote this tribute for my father back in 2020: https://luciant.medium.com/remembering-my-father-count-arthur-tarnowski-96f4ba3e680f
