Some time ago I was with my wife in a hotel somewhere in the Netherlands. Lovely beach hotel fully prepared against COVID-19.
What struck me in the hotel room on transition to the bathroom in a black stone threshold that had white spots in it. That threshold looked like a geological time cut from many millions of years ago. In that black stone threshold were white petrified prints of small aquatic/sea creatures, which must have lived at that time.
A long-gone geological time period in which human presence was lacking. A time when the Earth could still control its own ecology. When time is petrified in stone and we look after it, we are confronted with the relativity of our existence as human beings. If, in many millions of years’ time, a human being will still be present, will that man still be able to look at the time when we were petrified?
Will war, hatred and racism be petrified? Will our science and technology be petrified? Will that man find a black stone threshold on the doorstep of a bathroom containing the petrified old man? With all his disrespect towards his surrounding nature, his fellow man, the woman, the dissenter, that other culture. Will that man who may still exist no longer possess those “qualities”?
How wonderful it is to dream about that petrified time, which we attribute to the good things. How wonderful it is to dream of a distant future in which we will no longer be there for all the things that we are struggling with now.
We can ask ourselves the following question about the petrified time: do we still have the chance to petrify? Will a repetition of such a geological time cut ever happen again?
How beautiful is a thought model in which dream and reality are mixed up? How beautiful are desires for the ideal world and to know that it will never be able to manifest itself? Facing our limitations as human beings. Our shortcomings, in which we sometimes accuse ourselves of being stupid and not being able to learn from history. We are not stupid; we are limited and has reached our limitations. We are not the pinnacle of evolution; we are just a path in one of the many evolutionary paths.
Unfortunately, we are a limited animal. Of a species that is hugely successful in eradicating other species, which we slaughter and abuse without any respect.
However, in this melancholy of thoughts and dreams, beautiful things also emerge- our science, our technology, our artistic expressions. Well, I turn myself away from my laptop and start staring over the endless sea and lock myself away from what’s happening in this world right now with a quiet hope somewhere in my head!
