This article is published in issue 13 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until March 29, 2022
I absolutely did not expect all the most dramatic things that have happened to me in life. Not those at least: in case others. Even the most beautiful things that have happened to me I did not expect them at all, at least not those, just in case others.
As a girl I did not imagine that in the future there would be internet and social networks, but also that it would not be possible to smoke in public places. My teacher, at school, lit a cigarette with the butt of the other, and no one found anything strange in it. I certainly couldn’t have imagined AIDS at the time, but neither could the measles vaccine. Let alone the pandemic, or the invasion of Ukraine.
As Rebecca Solnit wrote on the Guardian. “The reality we live in today was unimaginable until recently. The world that is coming is something we can work for but cannot predict. If we want to have faith in something, we must believe in uncertainty… I have no faith in the future, but I have faith in its unpredictability ».
Snoopy’s grandmother had said such a thing before: “People spend their lives worrying about things that may never happen.” While the ones we don’t care about – I continue – swoop on us without warning. Having gone from pandemic to war was a blow, for everyone. We may not yet realize how much. But perhaps we are learning to really come to terms with the human condition, with its profound and ineluctable injustice and uncertainty, and to understand one thing that Eastern philosophies have always taught, which is that everything changes constantly. That we have very few certainties, that there are no answers but above all questions, and that it is better to live as much as possible in the present and do your part as best you can. This was also said by the Young Marmotswho along with Snoopy’s grandmother are among the Western thinkers who deserve more attention.
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Source: Vanity Fair
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