JULY 2001
Muss es sein?
That village now stands as it always has. Peaceful and alone, some forty miles inland from Aberdeen. Glass's community has decreased in number over the course of the last 100 years but those who remain continue to battle against the elements to make ends meet.
Aberdeen obviously seems much closer to Glass now than it did when my grandmother lived there. You can reach the city by car in under an hour now. In my grandmother's day it took all day by horse and cart.
My grandmother had the opportunity in her early twenties to join her boyfriend's family in emigrating to Australia. That must have seemed an unimaginable distance away and there was never a thought that she would ever have the opportunity to return.
She said "no" at the last minute, not being able to bear to leave her father. But what would have happened if she had said "yes"?
In his book The Unbearable Lightness Of Being, Milan Kundera talks of reconcilling Es muss sein (It must be so) with Es k�nnte auch anders sein (It could just as well be otherwise).
It is perhaps just as difficult to accept that it could have turned out differently than to believe we were destined to end up here. What external forces made my grandmother change her mind? Must it necessarily have been so? And how many other decisions, taken or simply left unresolved, change the course of history? And when do our personal histories, our personal decisions affect others?
In February 1997 I chose to study for a year in the small German town of Germersheim, near the French border. I could have chosen a dozen other places, but in Germersheim I met C�cile. Sometimes the weight of Es k�nnte auch anders sein is too much to bear. And my life changed irrevocably, and as irrevocable as it was unlikely, just like my grandmother's when, instead of going to Australia, she came down to England and married my grandfather, far away from Glass.
What decisions will wemake that will determine our future, our loves and the lives of our grandchildren? Can we steer a course away from Es muss sein and deal with the insecurity of Es k�nnte auch anders sein?
In years to come we will know, and my grandchildren will wonder what decisions I made, which seem so trivial now, have affected their lives.
I hope one day I might live in Glass, far away, remote, yet full of dreams and history and decisions being made.
"A year later, the same motif showed up as the basis for the fourth movement of the last quartet, Opus 135. By that time, Beethoven had forgotten about Dembscher's purse. The words 'Es muss sein!' had acquired a much more solemn ring; they seemed to issue directly from the lips of Fate. In Kant's language, even 'Good morning', suitably pronounced, can take the shape of a metaphysical thesis. German is a language of heavy words. 'Es muss sein!' was no longer a joke; it had become 'der schwer gefasste Entschluss' (the difficult or weighty resolution)...
"Being a surgeon means slitting open te surface of things and looking at what lies hidden inside. Perhaps Tomas was led to surgery by a desire to know what lies hidden on the other side of 'Es muss sein!'; in other words, what remains of life when a person rejects what he previously considered his mission."
The Unbearable Lightness Of Being by Milan Kundera