In these simple things

 

On the east border of the garden was a row of poplars, and from the window I could see the naked branches of the endmost. A gas-lamp suddenly blazed behind it in Acre Lane, and I descried a bird in the tree. And as the tree waved its plume in the night-wind, and the bird swayed on the moving twig, and the gas-lamp burned meekly and patiently beyond, I seemed to catch in these simple things a glimpse of the secret meaning of human existence, such as one gets sometimes, startlingly, in a mood of idle receptiveness. And it was so sad and so beautiful, so full of an ecstatic melancholy, that I dropped the curtain.

Arnold Bennett - Sacred and Profane Love (1905)

Most of us must have experienced something similar, that apparent glimpse of the secret meaning of human existence. Even mundane moments such as gazing down on an empty street from an upstairs window late at night, even quiet suburban moments may catch these glimpses. 

In my experience they tend to occur at night when human clamour has subsided, but not always. Walking along a silent, deserted valley or the sight of rain sweeping across distant hills. Brief but unmistakable. Nothing permanent seems to be left behind apart from a sense that perhaps we ought to seek them out more often. 

What is the secret meaning of human existence? I don't know. These moments don't tell us but they tell us there is one.