"Meaningless! Meaningless! says the Teacher. "Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless1...I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind2." The words struck me like a slap to the face. Their truth, cold as ice, was suddenly clear to me. All the things I had been striving for, success, fame, fortune, even the very human desire to be popular with my peers, they are all but chasing after the wind. They can never be caught. The moment you think you have them they go twirling off in some new direction.

We had been invited to a fall get together at a friend's house. As we drove to the party, there was a deer, newly dead lying alongside the road. It's once graceful form, now lay in a crumpled heap, seemingly cast aside, like an unwanted rag...