Yesterday, the number 121 kept coming up. My wife was running the washing machine and asked me to check how much time was left on it. It was 1 hour 21 minutes. Later, when I stopped at a gas station, the attendant said, "Is $121 okay?"
In the evening I went to a used bookstore and was drawn like a magnet to a slim volume called Parsifal and the Search for the Grail by Charles Kovacs -- lecture notes for use in Steiner-Waldorf schools -- and knew I should turn to page 121.
With this story we leave the brave knight Don Quixote, a man who really had some of the qualities of the true knights -- courage, love for battle, the wish to combat evil -- but, alas, lacked common sense and lived in a world of fantasy and illusion. And we also leave Sancho Panza, who had commonsense, but could not understand noble ideals and principles at all. . . .
In the end Don Quixote returns to La Mancha, his home village, and falls ill. But as death approaches he awakes from his dream of knights, and he dies with a clear mind, whilst Sancho Panza cries and weeps at the loss of a master who -- even in his folly -- was a good man, a man who strove for goodness.
