it was plain to me, lying on my back, that, of all the generations that had trod upon the earth, ours—Clara’s and mine, i.e., this very one—would be the first to discover that the oppressive patterns observable everywhere around us (wars, riots, divorces, famines, strange old people whose bitterness had yellowed their teeth and warped their spines) could be disrupted. All of eternity, that is, had been leading up to this moment, when we would finally arrive. At last could begin the culmination of earth’s tiresome history, during which, early on, countless generations of men in crude leather sandals had driven swords into other men in sandals, as the downtrodden women of the stabbed men looked on, dreading their coming ravishment, after which some slightly more sophisticated men, in leggings and cravats, had driven sabres into some other men in leggings and cravats, as their downtrodden women coughed into delicate handkerchiefs, dreading their coming ravishment, and even in good times the poor sickened, the rich feasted, men beat horses, lions ate baby gazelles, and for what? To what end? Had it all been just a pointless, random, meaningless disposition of energy?

No, not pointless, not at all: we were the point. All that had occurred before had been necessary to bring us about, to produce the young and healthy perfection that was us, our generation, so that we could finally, on behalf of all who had come before, render meaningful that brutal thing called life on earth.