I'm sitting in a café in France. There's lively chatter all around me. This morning I was ‚on the internet‘. How different these experiences are. Of course, pears aren't easily compared to apples, and yet we often do it. Working in an office and working from home, for example, are similar; seeking community on social networks or in a café, for example; reading in a library or researching on the internet. These are apples and pears, similar and yet categorically different. On the internet, we are...
An intense month is ending. Moving, separation, friends parting ways, the love of godchildren, new friendships, longings, waiting... I could write a screenplay about the last few weeks in Provence. Each day filled with pain, compassion, and love – collectively in various constellations. But I don't want to tell these little stories, even though Marcel Pagnol might have enjoyed them. What occupies me is the question of pain. Life is suffering, Buddhists say – very simplified. The wanting...
Cézanne drew and painted Mont Saint-Victoire over 80 times. Although from different perspectives, it was essentially just the mountain. This mountain has been there for a very long time; it exists in another era. A fruit fly has one day to live, then it's all over. We think in terms of generations when we expand our time horizon. A few hundred years seems like a lot to us. Our cultural history began 5000 years ago. For a mountain, that's practically yesterday. What do we see when we look at the same...
Many communities around me are currently experiencing a stress test. The term "midlife crisis" often comes up. I find it a silly word because it suggests that life, individual life, is in crisis. This perspective disturbs me. Why should life have a crisis? It seems more like communities are being called into question. A break-out, a desire for freedom, self-fulfillment, wanting to catch up on something. This idea also disturbs me. Was the past wrong? That would be a concerning notion. How...
In Europe, we have an idea of Enlightenment as something where an individual realizes that he or she lives under externally imposed constraints. The goal then is to overcome these constraints and place oneself under a higher law. A light goes on and shines into all the dark corners, thereby questioning what has not yet been reflected upon and examined. This intellectual movement is described with the metaphor of light as a torch. The light of Enlightenment shines centrally into…
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