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?
