At
that time
I lived in the outskirts of Duesseldorf, a town of a half-million
population located in the middle of Germany. My small, furnished flat
was in the second storey of a house that belonged to an
elderly married couple. They were very friendly people and would often invite me over for coffee and cake on their terrace. When the weather
was bad we went inside in their kitchen to visit.
During the summer they had encouraged me to use their big garden and to collect some of the fruit from the trees or
bushes. It was of such abundance and variety that one could imagine himself to be in paradise.
But
now, on the morning of New Year’s Day, it was in the middle of dreary
wintertime, and when I looked down into that
garden from my kitchen window, I began to think of the stark and
transitory nature of life. Soon, in the inevitable passage of the years,
it would also be winter in my own life followed by
death. Is there any sense to life?, I asked myself.
A
memory
came to mind. In years past, during a vacation in Yugoslavia, I had
stood in front of a huge sculpture showing an endless row of generations
from the beginning of the world till now.
What
a
shock! In that moment I was realizing for the first time in my life
an appalling truth! I was only a tiny part of the whole history of
mankind - once born and once dead. Others had lived
their short lives before and others would live it after me. And my
question at that time had been the same, Is there any sense to it?
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