Even a long human life adds up to only about 650,000 hours. And when that modest milestone flashes past, or at some other point thereabouts, for reasons unknown your atoms will shut you down, silently disassemble, and go off to be other things. And that's it for you."
Ever since I read this in the "Introduction" to Bill Bryson's book "A Short History of Nearly Everything", I have been determined to squeeze as much out of and into those 650,000 hours even though (as I quickly calculated without touching my electronic calculator; I still remember and use almost daily those "Rechenvorteile" drilled into me by my then primary school mathematics teacher more than sixty-five years ago) I have already outlived those 650,000 hours by well over five years.
Anyway, that's my excuse for all those sleepless nights which I spent listening to the radio or audiobooks, the latest of which has been "A Short History of Nearly Everything", and of which I was going to write this morning's post. That was before I found, quite accidentally while searching YouTube, this audiobook of "A Little History of the World" by Ernst Gombrich, which chronicles human development from the inventions of cavemen to the results of the First World War.
Its original title in German, "Eine kurze Weltgeschichte für junge Leser", sums up well Gombrich's goal, "I would like to emphasize that this book isn't thought of and wasn't ever thought of as a replacement for history books used in schools, which serve an entirely different purpose. I would like for my readers to relax and to follow history without having to take notes of names and dates. I promise too, that I won't ask you for them." It's the most magical definition of history I have ever heard!
I will get back to you with "A Short History of Nearly Everything" at some other time. Today I want you to spend the next nine out of those 650,000 hours on listening to this "once upon a time" audiobook.
