2023-08-04 18:30:05
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.
★★★
It was International Postcard Day. Sounds kind of old-fashioned, doesn’t it? There are postcards that last for decades and remain important. My good friend Martin found a postcard between old newspapers and almost ended up in the wastebasket. On it were longing lines from the vacation to him.
The lyrics began with the words: “I love it when you’re with me and lean your head against me, even if it’s so heavy that I can’t always hold it – I still have to learn that.”
My friend says: “It was a great love back in the late 70s. I don’t even know if I deserved this love. I wasn’t always nice…”
BILD columnist Louis Hagen
Photo: Wolf Lux
I spoke to Martin for a long time. The topic that moved us – triggered by a few touching, forgotten lines on an old postcard: Is there a kind of balance sheet in life that shows whether you have given enough love – and whether you have received enough love or even too much? And who can or should judge about it?
I said to him: Of course there is no minus or plus in love. Life is not a bookmaker. No one can expect to be rewarded when they love, so what pays in. But no one should be sad for too long after being disappointed.
also read
I find that love and disappointment are often different pages of the same book. The poet and historian Ricarda Huch (1864 to 1947) found words on this subject that still resonate and are valid today: love is the only thing that grows when we waste it.
Maybe it’s worth looking into old drawers on Postcard Day. Who knows what treasures are hidden there.
* 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.
#Column #Life #Love #Fits #Postcard #life #knowledge