The HCVE seminar is over and I am back in Lugano. I must say that this week in Dagstuhl was a very nice even if a bit tiresome one.

I think the best part of the seminar was meeting cool people, having great discussions (including, but by no means limited to the one that lead to the discovery of the nonlinear meta-parametrization :), attending interesting talks, learning more about my very own biomedical topic, and, last but not the least, enjoying the evening social activities. I think Dagstuhl is great because of the collegial atmosphere that it creates.

After the seminar was over, together with Marco and the dutch team (Olga, Vim and Ingo) we visited the university of Kaiserlautern where the hosts were kind enough to give us demos of the technical marvels (powerwall and stereo monitor) they have there.

The way back was eventless and followed by many hours of sleep. And this is good because another busy week is waiting at the end of which there is, guess what… another busy one in Bari.

Victor Frankl in Man’s Search for Meaning:

“My mind clung to the image of my wife. A thought crossed my mind: I didn’t even know if she were still alive. I knew only one thing, which I have learened well by now: love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Wether or not he is physically present, wether or not he is still alive or not, ceases somehow to be of importance. […]

Had I known than that my wife was dead, I think I would have still given myself, undisturbed by that knowledge, to the contemplation of her image, and my mental conversation with her would have been just as vivid and just as satisfying.”

In the afterword of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Pirsig also observes that his way of mentally perceiving his son away in another country was not fundamentally different from the way of thinking about him after he died. Although the physical existence ceased, the spiritual one was unaffected, it continued to arise the same feelings and emotions as before.

I think it is a huge challenge to live in such a way that we enrich somebody else’s life. And if we succeed, there is a chance that even after we are gone, we might still bring a smile on somebody’s face, bright somebody’s day or guide somebody’s path. To me, this is one of life’s highest possible meanings. Surely, besides, getting a PhD, but I thought that was obvious :)