In our own era

Our present world is more rough and ready: the majority of our environments do not contain the same multitude of living centers. And they do not, therefore, so easily contain centers which are beings — beings which remind me of myself. In many cases, rather, the world is more alien from us, more separated from us, its centers not developed as I-like beings.

Again, what I experience when I drive over the bridge, when I gulp in like beer the beauty of my existence — the lights on the road, the cars, the trees, the sky. The inner thing, the beauty of that freeway, the beautiful world which surrounds the freeway, which makes us realize how marvelous it is to be alive, for one second only, one day, to experience all this.

(Pages 103-104)