It was equally apparent to me while putting together this issue that the Ender’s Game, recent Martian or many articles in the magazine show how timeless these themes are – and yet closer every day. Maybe we are going to find that the universe is appealing to us especially by its peace. And the silence.
But robots lack the ability of reflection. Sometimes I feel as if we were becoming robots ourselves – effective and productive, yet with no time to reflect. No time for space without thought.
From time to time I check the ratio of things in my life I have to do and those I want to do. What am I looking forward to today and what I would rather skip. Allow me to spell out the ideal, identical with the proverbial paradise on the Earth, which is to have the scales tipped 100% to the side of ‘every God-blessed day I only do things that I want to do because they bring meaning and joy into my life’. How utopian this is I leave up to you – but that is why we invented ideals, anyway. Not to necessarily reach them in the sweat of our face, but to have them point out the direction. To suggest that usually, there are more ways and they all lead to Rome in the end.
With the words of the great maestro:
“In life, a person can take one of two attitudes: to build or to plant. The builders might take years over their tasks, but one day, they finish what they’re doing. Then they find that they’re hemmed in by their own walls. Life loses its meaning when the building stops.
Then there are those who plant. They endure storms and all the vicissitudes of the seasons, and they rarely rest. But unlike a building, a garden never stops growing. And while it requires the gardener’s constant attention, it also allows life for the gardener to be a great adventure.
Gardeners always recognize each other, because they know that in the history of each plant lies the growth of the whole World.”
(Paulo Coelho: Brida)
