Areopagus Volume LXI

Seven short lessons every someday.

Welcome one and all to the sixty first volume of the Areopagus. Given the extraordinary patience which you have shown in dealing with, over the last fortnight, not only one but two atypical and extended instalments of the Areopagus, I have decided that today we really must get back to basics. So, for your brief enjoyment but lasting interest and use, my Gentle Readers, I present an abbreviated edition of the Areopagus. Concision is the buzzword today.

But first, to open our minds and hearts, we turn to that great mystic poet of the 13th century: Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī. Usually, of course, simply known as Rumi:

...Awakened, he
Will laugh to think what troublous dreams he had.
And wonder how his happy state of being
He could forget, and not perceive that all
Those pains and sorrows were the effect of sleep
And guile and vain illusion. So this world
Seems lasting, though ’tis but the sleepers’ dream;
Who, when the appointed Day shall dawn, escapes
From dark imaginings that haunted him,
And turn…