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.
★★★
A week in the new year, a week in a new life – what has changed. Or is everything as it always was? A friend of mine: “I’m afraid of the future. You can’t sugarcoat what isn’t beautiful.” Is he right?
With a bit of distance, I think many negative thoughts have evaporated like rockets on New Year’s Eve. The author Harald Martenstein summarized this in an article about growing old in the ZEIT magazine: “How can this wonderful life ever fill you up?”
Anyway, I’m looking forward to the snow whenever it may come. To the daffodils, to the morning when I hear the birds chirping outside my window. I look forward to what has always been and always will be: the first morning of spring that doesn’t feel like winter. The day the coat stays in the closet – for the rest of the year. To the good mood of my colleagues because it’s the first mild day of the year.
BILD columnist Louis Hagen
Aren’t there many beautiful things to look forward to?
There are focal points of the heart that you can set now: the next vacation, Easter with the family, the first asparagus (why not!), the first bike tour in short sleeves. And nature, which exudes its mild breath – as if it wanted to say with the poet Ina Seidel: “The linden trees smell immortal. What are you afraid of? … The summer will stand blue and bright…”
Don’t worry about me being a romantic, dear readers: I’m looking forward to all of this. And I hope you too!
* 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-mittel-shop.de.