Principles of Life

Elias Howe (1819-1867) was born in Massachusetts, U.S.A. He died at the young age of 48. Although his life was short, his contribution to the world of clothes—that of the sewing machine—will always be remembered.

The sewing machine invented by Elias Howe was at first utilized, not for sewing clothes, but for stitching shoes. The main breakthrough was the development of a lock stitch by a shuttle carrying a lower thread and a needle carrying an upper thread which passed through a hole situated at the tip of the needle.

On December 17, 1903, the brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright became the first men to successfully pilot a heavier-than-air craft under both control and power.

Helen Hooven Santmyer is now 88 years old, crippled and half-blind. She also suffers from emphysema. Because of her infirmity, she resides permanently in a nursing home in Xenia, Ohio, U.S.A.

Over fifty years ago, when Helen Hooven Santmyer was working as a reference librarian, she started to write a book. At first she worked on it in her spare time. Then, when ill health forced her to retire, she continued her work in the nursing home where she now lives.

Mr. J. Krishnamurti, 90, is a well-known Indian thinker. When he is on a public stage, he folds his hands and says, “Sir, I am a nobody,” or, “Sir, I am just a passer-by.” Are we all nothing in reality? His answer is, “Yes, when you are as nothing, you are everything.” Islamic thinkers disapprove of thoughts of this kind for they lead to skepticism or monism, and both are just a philosophical license for irresponsibility and monism. Yet there is an example from Krishnamurti’s life, which can be quoted here with great pertinence.