On the difficult choice between the chain of ancient wisdom and a club of dead, male VIPs – and how to resolve it.

The search for wisdom is a trait that I like in Homo sapiens. We want to know how to be a human being and live life well. Isn’t that beautiful? We seek this wisdom from people wiser than ourselves, often from the distant past. Ancient narratives seem to be sweetened like a fig and therefore more reliable than life hacks from Mr Brown down the road. So it is perfect when old wisdom is passed down unofficially, from hand to hand, down the chain. This is how “Desiderata” (“Dezyderata” in Polish), a collection of recommendations for how to live a good life, started to do the rounds in Poland. For a long time, it was thought to be anonymous and from the 17th century. The Latin title means ‘things desirable, desired, postulated’. It is believed that Zbigniew Herbert wrote his poem “Przesłanie Pana Cogito” (“The Envoy of Mr. Cogito”) in opposition to “Desiderata”.

The hidden desires of the flower children

The career of “Desiderata” on the Vistula river be