"I grew up in New York City, two blocks from the Museum of Natural History. I recall, many years ago, when the current Hall of African Peoples was constructed. The first time I entered it I was struck, for under the arch through which one enters the exhibit is inscribed the words "One is born, one dies, the land increases."
Those words haunted me then, and they haunt me still. Is it true that that's all there is? That we are nothing more than a long way around from loam to loam? Is there some reason for my being here except to live out my allotted time, to burn my days alongside others who are, in turn, burning theirs? It was that puzzle, that concern, that gnawing bewilderment, that led me along the path of literature and eventually philosophy..."
— A Significant Life: Human Meaning in a Silent Universe by Todd May
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