The Author

Born and raised in Germany, I was given the name Harald Thomas Pollmann. My upbringing was rational and my education technical, with a natural interest in physics and engineering.

In my 30s, I spent time living on a yacht, cruising and diving coral reefs. Many of the reefs I knew then have since changed or died off completely. That time left a deep impression: the beauty of the natural world, its intelligence, its fragility, and the strange fact that we are here at all.

South Africa later became home, but my way of looking at life has always remained practical and grounded. I have never been someone who easily left the visible world behind for spiritual ideas.

And yet, the deeper questions have always stayed.

Like many people who find their way to this kind of work, I live with both sides. A deep respect for the physical world and its laws, and a persistent sense that the human experience cannot be fully understood by explanation alone.

How We Are Here grew from that lifelong inquiry and is offered in that same spirit — to assist some readers in understanding life a little more clearly and in creating more space around certain situations.

It is simply my attempt to give language to something that may already be quietly known in many of us:

That before life is explained, life is already here.