Wunderschöne Finsternis

"We were far too keyed up to manage any sleep. The light scared us. We lay there with our eyes closed whispering together like kids on a sleepover. I mentioned that we'd only moved a couple of degrees on a small planet orbiting a sun, and you quickly added that the sun was only one of a hundred thousand million other stars in the Milky Way. And so we were off. What we'd experienced was no more than a ripple on a great ocean. We had to enlarge our perspective. We had to take the focus off ourselves. But now I didn't find my eyes filling with tears and blurting out that one day we'd no longer be here. It was inappropriate now: it was no longer the right climate for sorrow; guilt had taken sorrow's place, because now we might well have caused the death of another human being."