In my childhood I had a remarkable ability:
I could envisage what people whom I met would look like when they got older.
Some acquired beauty with age, others got ugly. I did not understand it, but I
felt that whereas some people during their lives slowly gathered beauty, others
lost what they had had.
The upbringing in our family was not
founded upon religion, or on a consciously cultivated ethical or cultural
tradition, but on the good heart of our mother Sarah. Nor did we hear of faith
at school, as if the concept did not exist any more.
I only started reading biblical stories as
a mature man. When reading them, I experienced anew the special feeling from
childhood, namely that beauty and happiness are only loaned to us, and on our
long way through life we can either endow them with more value, or lose them.
The question is, why man going along his
way, the way on which nothing is assured, nothing promised beforehand, the way
which sometimes resembles a cul-de-sac, why does he not give up? It must be
some inner faith which need not be talked about, or promoted.
Faith is a very personal thing. And also,
man should always be on the way.
