Geht es dir gut?

That would drive me to tears instantly.

Well, you know what I mean. Not all hope is lost yet.

I can’t see future generations; I can’t see any faces. A face would at least represent a direct offer for talk. Though maybe the whole thing just reminds me of another fact: I can’t look into your face anymore. A missile, a war tells me it’s ridiculous to talk about you and me. But was not your face, and the offer for talk it promised the source of justice, compassion and love – extending to abstract future generations and other creatures on this planet?

Sitting next to a child, one might imagine that there could be one, maybe two future generations, and why not a third and a fourth, on which I’ll never set eyes? And a fifth that will never have heard of us? Is this unimaginable? We have to overcome the limitations of our selfishness to imagine this.

Will anyone, among those who haven’t been born yet, have the inclination to bring their face or body into the world so you can’t get around them? Will any of the as-yet unborns still have the desire to interfere? Will any deoxyribonucleic acid still be prepared to undertake the job of infinitely copying itself for a person to be able to put their head above the parapet?

It’s essential that future generations participate in shaping the world. Although they’ll probably be different than we expected them to be. And we, too, shouldn’t be the ones to recklessly hold in store harm for them in the future.

The future, as it is, is foreseeable. We ought to make it unforeseeable once again. We ought to transform: to become the ones who politely ask the next generation first. The future, as it is, is a beaten track.

My therapist said that you won’t come back. She knows all the stories about you and me. And she said, rather than concerning myself with you, I’m supposed to take care of myself now. I guess this piece of advice could be transferred to future generations as well. I know how it feels to not be able to shoot into a face, since a face is always automatically an offer for talk. Only now this includes the faces that haven’t yet been born. But as it is, every one of us here is shooting right into these faces. It’s like you create the shape of a face with sand on a beach contaminated with microplastics, and as you’ve finished the face in the sand, you realize that is has signs of bullet shots all over. And the next wave will come to wash it away. But the face in the sand doesn’t vanish.

The face mask brings to the bearer’s notice the fact that this planet lacks atmosphere. And it’s true, it’s lacking. We’re like aliens landed on a foreign planet. For those who look at the mask on the bearer, it lets them know that when two strangers wearing masks meet, they won’t be able to grant an advance on trustworthiness and confidence, since, by definition, this would require the abandonment of any camouflage and arms. It’s just not possible, see Kyiv.

And now they’re sitting here donning face masks, and – *snap* – the next moment they might be wearing gas masks.

Never have so many died such a lonely death in a war.