Gift

Thanks to Gary for bringing this to my attention.

This question is from Question of the Day, Sunday, June 26th, 2005:

Gift.
Someone has decided to give you a gift out of the blue.
With no limitations on cost, or accessibility, what gift would you appreciate the most and why?
If this gift can be anything, even something intangible, I would appreciate patience the most. It's the one thing that I seek: more, even, than understanding, love, or peace. Patience would help me to do many of the things that I do not (or cannot) do now but desire to do.

If, on the other hand, the gift must be tangible, the obvious answer is a house, near enough the Mississippi to see it from my back windows, outfitted with little more than a bed, a desk, and the fastest computer money can buy.

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To the one that I know who reads, but has never admitted it: please don't, unless you're willing to own up to it. Not that these quotes have anything to do with what I just wrote, but...they're timely.

"But the torment of others remains an experience
Unqualified, unworn by subsequent attrition.
People change, and smile: but the agony abides."
(T.S. Eliot, in 'The Dry Savages', in Four Quartets,
as quoted in Val McDermid's Torment of Others)

"All torment, trouble, wonder, and amazement
Inhabits here. Some heavenly power guide us
Out of this fearful country!"
(William Shakespeare, in The Tempest,
as quoted in Val McDermid's Torment of Others)