Wednesday, July 2, 2008





Should one take life seriously or not? Now I’ve got it, at last. Sometimes one has to be very serious about things, sometimes one must not be serious at all. Only crashing bores are always serious, and only complete idiots are never serious about anything. How can one laugh and have some fun if one is dead serious, and how can one discuss a serious problem that has to be solved with someone who feels that life is but a joke?

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Yesterday I was very, very tired. I felt like lead, worn out and burned out. I’ve been working too much and I haven’t had enough sleep for weeks now. But, as I walked through the park on my way home from work, I suddenly felt very happy, for absolutely no reason at all. It was a wonderful summer afternoon. The air was fresh after a rain shower, the sky was blue with a few white clouds and the trees where luxuriant green. I took a photo of a puddle. Isn’t it silly for a man in his fifties, to take photos of puddles? A boy was playing with his German shepherd pup on the big lawn and I was thinking about how strange life is. “I have absolutely no reason for being this happy now. Isn't this unconditional love? I love everything for no reason at all.”

Today, as I write this, I’m back in a more normal state of mind. I have a day off from work and I plan to do as little as possible.

Just before I begun to write this I was watching Elisabeth Lesser being interviewed by Oprah Winfry on her soul series. I was thinking: Life is not necessarily a school. It is a good way to look at life. It makes life worth living, it makes life easier to digest, but it is not necessary how life really is. It is a world view. “Life is not a school. The deathbed is not a braking-up. Life is not a meditation practice, not a rehearsal. All this is just thoughts.” This is also just thoughts. How is life really, if one doesn’t have any thoughts at all about it? Isn’t thinking what makes us human? Is life about finding a good world view?