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.
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My colleague Matthias said it almost casually: “We were in the Semper Opera in Dresden, a day later in the Green Vault. Then a dinner in the Taschenberg Palais – pure luxury. It’s so nice to experience things like this together. How lucky to be together.”
My colleague was not talking about a new lover, he was talking about the weekend with his wife. The two have been married for 22 years.
Actually just a nice little story, blurted out between coffee and breakfast rolls. But to me it sounded like it was from another world. Singles live in 40 percent of all German households. Living alone is trendy. I often hear what you can’t experience when you’re wandering around the houses alone. A friend of mine makes amazing trips alone and sends me amazing photos. These pictures tell the story of beaches, palm trees, beautifully laid tables. But they don’t show people. My boyfriend doesn’t like taking pictures of himself, why should he?
Maybe it’s a bit unfair to write about happiness for two these days: The economy is slipping, we no longer dare to take hot showers, we’re waiting for the next Corona instructions, so much unrest this summer. What should you actually do if you don’t have a partner for happiness for two?
BILD columnist Louis Hagen
Dear reader: How often do we think about beautiful or annoying things and wish we could talk to someone about them. You can’t force it, nobody can. Relationships (what a stupid word for love) come and go, unfortunately.
90 percent of all men and women in Germany want a happy partnership (Allensbach). “An ideal partner sees and accepts us as people with all our characteristics and gives us the feeling of being valued for who we really are,” says the sociologist and author Udo Thiedeke.
Let’s stay vigilant, dear readers. In the head and in the heart. Maybe the day of happiness for two is not far away. Kurt Tucholsky:
When you go to work early in the morning
when you are at the train station with your worries:
then the city shows you asphalt smooth
million faces in the human funnel:
Two foreign eyes, one quick look,
the brow, the pupils, the lids –
What was that? Maybe your luck in life…
* Louis Hagen (75) was a member of the BILD editor-in-chief for 13 years and is now a consultant at the communications agency WMP. His texts are available as a book at koehler-mittler-shop.de.