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*, who comes 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.
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This weekend the time will be changed again – but where to? Forwards, backwards, some people have to think, that’s where I belong.
What else is there to remember?
A few examples that everyone knows: PIN at ATMs; credit card PIN; access to the computer; Mobile phone password, SIM card password; Password for the Apple ID (every third German has an iPhone); passwords for social media accounts; Youth protection PIN for TV (streaming); Number code for the bike lock.
BILD columnist Louis Hagen
This madness could be continued – you know it yourself, dear readers. A daily ritual, our brains must deliver! Now let’s do a cross-check: Do you know your child’s/grandchild’s telephone number off the top of your head? No, don’t check your phone. Honestly, I don’t have all these important numbers in my head because my cell phone knows them.
The good old notebook with telephone numbers has long had its day.
But sometimes it seems to call out to us. My grandmother had the Berlin number 732783. I called her if I couldn’t make it to the Sunday roast at 1 p.m. on time. That was 40 years ago. The number is burned into my brain and will probably never go away.
I still know my phone number from Strasbourg, where I lived for two years (003388-7314567). I see the number and it makes me dream: Choucrout (Alsatian sauerkraut dish) in the Gerber district, Gewürztraminer in Strasbourg Cathedral. My first phone number at work at the Berliner Morgenpost – how proud I was!
If you compare the times (which is actually nonsensical): Today we have to remember more numbers, letters and symbols than in the past, and we can do that too. When I was a young man, I only knew a few phone numbers by heart. But behind each one there was a story. And I haven’t forgotten them to this day.
* 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.