If you’re reading this, you came from here. I’m gobsmacked to have finally found it. I didn’t know where it came from, but tonight discovered it’s from the beginning of James Kavanaugh’s 1970 book There Are Men Too Gentle To Live Among Wolves. It’s amazing how something can just hit you to the core, even so very many years later. It’s awesome, it’s lovely, it’s knowing, it’s kind.
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Some people do not have to search, they find their niche early in life and rest there, seemingly contented and resigned. They do not seem to ask much of life, sometimes they do not seem to take it seriously. At times I envy them, but usually I do not understand them. Seldom do they understand me.
I am one of the searchers. There are, I believe millions of us. We are not unhappy, but neither are we really content. We continue to explore ourselves, hoping to understand. We like to walk along the beach, we are drawn by the ocean, taken by its power, its unceasing motion, its mystery and unspeakable beauty. We like forests and mountains, deserts and hidden rivers and lonely cities as well. Our sadness is as much a part of our lives as is our laughter. To share our sadness with one we love is perhaps as great a joy as we can know–unless it be to share laughter.
We searchers are ambitious only for life itself, for everything beautiful it can provide. Most of all we want to love and be loved. We want to live in a relationship that will not impede our wandering, nor prevent our search, nor lock us in prison walls; that will take us for what little we have to give. We do not want to prove ourselves to another or to compete for love.
This is a book for wanderers, dreamers and lovers, for lonely men and women who dare to ask of life everything good and beautiful. It is for these who are too gentle to live among wolves.
-James Kavanaugh