We human beings are marvelous creatures. We invent things like love, justice, beauty and a whole range of other concepts even though we are fragile little bags of water held up by brittle calcium. With oblivion before and behind us, we create, and hope, and dream, and love. To be a decent human being is a heroic task, and a noble one.
When I think about it, this gives me all the meaning and fulfillment I need. I believe in people. While we often get things wrong and are capable of enormous cruelty, our cumulative achievements slowly enable us to remove more and more suffering from our fellow human beings.
If you think this is not happening, then consider your family history. I have looked at mine - a hundred and fifty years ago my ancestors were dirt-farmers in Holland. They were poor folk, poorly nourished and forced to work under conditions we would not find bearable today. They bore child after child, and buried about 1 out of every 3 children. In some families it was especially bad - child after child died before it reached the age of 4. Sometimes they did not even bother to change the name between children, and buried 3 children in a row, all with the same name. I cannot even imagine such hardship. We have now dealt with that - thanks to modern scientific medicine, childhood diseases are no longer a continual source of grief everywhere and we have hopes that one day, it will be like this all over the world.
We will keep improving things if we keep our eye on the price, and do not expect that we already know everything that is worth knowing. It was not gods will that those children died. They died as a result of our ignorance. It is our duty to make sure that we learn, so that we may prevent suffering because of ignorance.
