The events of the world can have no separate life from the world. And yet the world itself can have no temporal view of things. It can have no cause to favor certain enterprises over others. The passing of armies and the passing of sands in the desert are one. There is no favoring, you see. How could there be? At whose behest? This man did not cease to believe in God. Nor did he come to have some modern view of God. There was God and there was the world. He knew that the world would forget him but that God could not. And yet that was the very thing he wished for.
The passage reflects on the interconnectedness of worldly events, suggesting that everything within the world, including human endeavors and natural occurrences, exists without favoritism or moral judgment. It emphasizes the equality of all events, comparing the movement of soldiers to the natural flow of sand in the desert, indicating that both are part of the same reality. There is an absence of preference, raising existential questions about the nature of causality in the universe.
The protagonist maintains a complex relationship with faith, believing in God while also recognizing the world’s inevitable forgetfulness. He understands that, unlike the transient nature of life, God's awareness is eternal. Despite this knowledge, he yearns for the world's acknowledgement, revealing a tension between the divine and human desire for significance. This longing highlights the struggle between seeking meaning in a fleeting existence and the hope for a lasting remembrance beyond worldly confines.
