Excerpts from "The Time of Your Life" by William Saroyan (to be read at special family occasions)

NOTE BY TED TRZYNA: These are excerpts from the preface to a play by William Saroyan, “The Time of Your Life.” I first saw the play performed at the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium with my young daughter Jennifer. I was moved by these words and have read them at Thanksgiving dinners and other family occasions. I would like to have the reading of them continue as a family tradition. “Man” and “men” should be read as is; the context, as well as usage at the time the play was written, indicate they were meant to be gender neutral.

In the time of your life, live—so that in that good time there shall be no ugliness or death for yourself or for any life your life touches.

Seek goodness everywhere, and when it is found, bring it out of its hiding place and let it be free and unashamed.

Discover in all things that which shines and is beyond corruption.

Encourage virtue in whatever heart it may have been driven into secrecy and sorrow by the shame and terror of the world.

Ignore the obvious, for it is unworthy of the clear eye and the kindly heart.

Be the inferior of no man, or of any men be superior.

Despise evil and ungodliness, but not men of ungodliness or evil. These, understand.

In the time of your life, live—so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it.

William Saroyan (1908-1981) was a Californian of Armenian descent. “The Time of Your Life,” set in San Francisco, opened on Broadway in 1939. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, but the author refused it because “Such awards vitiate and embarrass art at its very source.”