Arnon Grunberg

Stoicism

Sunday morning

On Sunday morning I boarded KLM flight 1792 from Munich to Amsterdam. I looked out the window, it was a beautiful morning, young, handsome men were loading luggage onto the plane.
I saw my suitcase.
The men were staring at my suitcase, was something wrong with it? They finished loading the luggage; my suitcase was not loaded. It was standing there, alone on the tarmac.
I said to myself: “These guys know what they are doing. Perhaps my suitcase will be loaded onto a different part of the plane.” But when I arrived in Amsterdam my suitcase wasn’t there. I tried to be stoic, but my bad mood was stronger than my stoicism.