Column for Life: You are a Miracle Unique | life & knowledge

2023-05-19 19:00:47

What is really important? What touches us today – and will not go away tomorrow? It’s the things that have moved us since human existence: happiness, love, family, partnership, time, stress, loneliness, farewell, grief.

BILD columnist Louis Hagen*, coming from a German-Jewish family, sought answers to the eternal questions of mankind from poets, thinkers and researchers. And found a few answers that are amazingly simple – and yet can enrich our lives.

★★★

My dear neighbor Adriana is eleven years old and goes to elementary school right across from our house. I had given her a small toy horse and she wanted to show me the stable in her room.

There was a note on the wall, Adriana had pasted it. “What’s that?” I asked. “May I read that?” “Sure,” she said proudly.

It was a letter from her class teacher. It read: “Dear Adriana, you are a miracle and a pearl of great price! Always remember: You are unique, valuable and loved. You are worth more than your grade point average.”

Adriana comes from Ukraine and is a “precious pearl”, as her teacher wrote to her

Photo: Private

This text, if I may put it so simply, blew my mind. How beautiful, how loving, how direct! Adriana comes from the Ukraine and speaks perfect German.

I don’t know in what context your teacher wrote these wonderful lines – whether as a consolation, an encouragement, a recognition. It’s none of my business either, I didn’t ask.

My neighbor only said that many children had received slips of paper – each with a different text.

BILD columnist Louis Hagen

Photo: Wolf Lux

Psychologists know that people who are praised are more motivated, perform better and aim higher. And: The recognition helps to stay physically and mentally healthy.

► My neighbor’s teacher must have learned this during her training and obviously knows how to motivate children.

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But the way she phrases her praise – I think that’s great. I believe such sentences have more power than punishments and reprimands. Is there anything nicer that can be said to a child than the sentence: You are unique?

I know the name of the class teacher, I will not say it. I may say this much: It is Arabic and means – miracle.

Isn’t that nice?

_{* Louis Hagen (76) was a member of the BILD editor-in-chief for 13 years and is now a consultant at the communications agency WMP. His texts have also been published as a book and are available at koehler-mittel-shop.de.}