“To be sad is to have the ability to enjoy happiness”

At the Naval Academy, during your first months, the months of Plebe summer, you are required to know by memory the words written in the small book Reef Points .

We studied Reef Points with the same intensity China’s people were then studying Mao’s Little Red Book.

French author Emile Ajar gave me the means to lay a trap for myself.

“To be sad is to have the ability to enjoy happiness”. When I read those words by Emile Ajar, I wanted to write them down, to remember them. At the time I was under intense pressure and the words gave me encouragement.

I wrote the quotation onto a blank page in my Reef Points. The trap was set.

At a meal, an upperclassman held my Reef Points as he questioned me. He asked me “Who said ‘To be sad is to have the ability to enjoy happiness’?”

I didn’t remember the name of the French author. But by writing the quotation in by Reef Points…. I made that quotation one of the items I was required to memorize.