***

The European worldview, which sees each human life as something separate and complete, unconnected to the past and with a doubtful or nonexistent future, revolves in a closed circle where thought is thwarted by fruitless attempts to grasp the purpose of such an existence. Hence the tragic dissatisfaction of the observer. All that lies before them is a fragment of the great world drama, a single episode in the eternal life of the soul. By recognizing only this fragment, the observer crystallizes it into something static and finished, bearing all the marks of meaninglessness and arbitrariness. To understand the significance of this fragment, it must be connected to what came before and what will follow, which becomes impossible when the transient nature of life’s unfolding process is turned into a fixed, finite quantity.

© Elene Pisareva