It’s always 60 minutes, but how different we perceive it. When the iPhone gives a signal, we know that the next video conference will start in an hour. And then once the conference has started, an hour can be endless.
Hardly any other concept of time has so stimulated poets and thinkers as this small part of a big day. “Because the sum of our life is the hours we love,” wrote Wilhelm Busch. And Theodor Fontane wrote: “Only the hour belongs to us. And an hour, if she is happy, is long. ”And in Matthew (25:13) there are the famous words that Jesus said to his disciples:“ Therefore be vigilant, for you know neither day nor hour. ”
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A new hour – we’re gaining it this weekend, dear readers. Is it going to be a routine event like a video conference? Or do we conjure up something very special in these 60 minutes? As Marcel Proust put it beautifully: “An hour is not just an hour: it is a vessel filled with scents, sounds, and plans.”
Only a few will know how to use the free hour live – who is up at two o’clock in the morning. But the gift arrives promptly. You wake up the next day and think: somehow everything is different. Your apartment full of light, the sun woke you up, yesterday at this time it felt like it was still night.
BILD columnist Louis Hagen
This is how this beautiful new day began. And the feeling of happiness doesn’t stop. It moves from one hour to the next – literally. It is as if we did not give what was given to us. It is, as Friedrich Nietzsche wrote: “The greatest events – these are not our loudest, but our quietest hours.”
Dear readers, I wish you a consistently wonderful day with many wonderful hours.
This one additional hour – we only get it for free once a year.
Louis Hagen (74) was a member of the BILD editor-in-chief for 13 years and is now a consultant at the communications agency WMP. You can also find his texts at: thebusinessbeast.com. More about the author: www.louishagen.de.
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