Terrace (June 13, 2026)

I look at them, and a seemingly absurd thought comes to mind. They are no different from people crammed into train cars heading to death camps. They are no different from soldiers dying on the fronts of today’s wars. They are no different from children dying of hunger or from elderly people passing away alone in hospitals.

Of course, from the perspective of everyday life, the difference seems enormous. Some drink an aperitif on the roof of a luxury hotel; others die in suffering. Yet that difference exists only within a particular fragment of time. Every human life has limits. Sooner or later, everyone falls into the snares of suffering, loss, and death. For some, it happens earlier; for others, later. From the perspective of a single moment, this matters enormously. From the perspective of an entire life, that meaning begins to blur.

Perhaps the greatest human illusion is the belief that one stands on the safe side of fate. That war, illness, loneliness, or death mainly concern other people. Yet the boundary between a hotel terrace and the train car of history is extraordinarily thin. Often, only the accident of place and time of birth separates them.

Not everyone, however, sees this shared fate. Most people live as if they were eternal. They occupy themselves with their affairs, plans, successes, and failures. Not because they are stupid, but because awareness of one’s own finitude is a burden not everyone wants, or knows how, to carry.

And yet this very awareness seems to me the most precious thing. It does not lead to despair or passivity. It leads to work. To work on oneself, on character, relationships, responsibility, and the way we experience the time given to us.

That is why the truth about the human being lies neither on the terrace of a luxury hotel nor in a train car moving toward death. It lies in everyday life. In what we do with the awareness that we are here only for a moment.

Read this article in Polish: Taras (13 czerwca 2026)