Long Live the Post Horn!

by Vigdis Hjorth

Such a meagre existence. Would it never get bigger? Was I, too, condemned to this tiny life? Was that my future? I desperately hoped not, but then again I wasn’t hoping for anything else, I had no ideas about anything different or larger, I foresaw nothing larger, but there had to be something! That was my problem, my stupidity that I couldn’t reconcile myself to the little life as they could. They wanted nothing larger; they weren’t tormented as I was by the lack of contact with something greater.

For so long I’d been on some kind of merry-go-round that had finally stopped so I could get off and I didn’t want to get back on.

What do we do with our despair if our lives are too small to contain it? Deny our despair and ignore our beating hearts, remain at odds with ourselves and fight ourselves, or accept that there’s so much we’ll never understand intellectually and try to live with things which don’t add up, that what’s most important might be something we can only just sense, and teach our brains to illuminate our hearts and help us live with contradictions that can’t be cancelled out and become open to the idea that being a mere mortal is enough, more than enough in most respects, and once we’re alive, try to live with gratitude and passion rather than shame and paralysis.’

That’s how it’s usually done, the head of Postkom said. You promise small things in order to get the big ones through, buttons and glass beads in return for principles. Because power is like an elephant, he said, it may be hard to describe, but you’ll know it when you see it.

I knew now that no one is insignificant and that every day every one of us must choose whether to build civilisation or the opposite, let the world fall apart, and that even the smallest things present each of us with a challenge.