Category: Life

Life is a parent category to me, it can contain almost anything that is concerned with life on this planet: plant, animal, human…

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‘Suffering from a Lack of Emotion’ ? – ‘*Feeling* Alive’

image with a stone heart, blue flowers and a light
“What to take when you suffer from a lack of emotion.”

Erich Kästner, German poet and award-winning writer of the 20th century, published a small book of poems he called:
‘Dr. Erich Kästner’s lyrical medicine chest’ / Dr. Erich Kästners lyrische Hausapotheke.

He ordered the poems by ‘ailment’ in the sense of what to ‘take’ in which kind of life’s – sometimes hard – situations.

I love this book. Among others.

One category in there he called:
“What to take when you suffer from a lack of emotion.”

He was not the first to state the importance of emotions and feeling in human life. Another fine and well-crafted example is the poetic fairy tale Wilhelm Hauff wrote in the 19th century, “Das kalte Herz” / Heart of Stone.

Why do they write about it?

Why would Kästner call it a ‘suffering’, consider it something treatable?

Because in the Western world at least for generations business considerations made it necessary to appear ‘cool, calm and collected’ any time. I mentioned this elsewhere. Additionally, two world wars called for heroism and ‘toughness’ before, during and after.

Building destroyed cities from the ground up again, in many cases made it appear to be even more essential, to be ‘tough’, not be moved to tears by sadness – or similar kinds of emotions.

It seems that many consider it a ‘weakness’ to this day.
Men are even more challenged that way still: A man is to be always superior, know his way about, and will save women, children and the elderly first, risking his life, if needs be.

The Heart of Stone

The result of such ideas is the opposite of an emotional mindset: Stony, dry and unmoved people ‘move’ through life and wonder only now and again what might be missing.

For men, almost the only two spheres in life they are allowed to be moved by, still, are sports and passion.

Of course this is also culturally dependent. Some cultures ‘grant’ emotions to men, and in general in certain situations, that others do not.

In effect it means that such people feel ‘dead to the world’. Walking, talking, attending to business, yet nothing seems to interest them.

Emotions ‘at the Heart’

In modern medicine even, it’s become clear – after certain brain surgery cases – that without actual emotions at all, we are unable to decide on anything.

Emotions are crucial, underestimated, and actually there, even if we are not aware of that ourselves.

Sigmund Freud did the research and cleared up a lot of unknowns around the whole matter.

How to go about it if you hadn’t realized it already?

The first thing is awareness. That is what I try to do around here… for the general public, as it were, hoping to light a candle perhaps.
Or have one or the other of my readers realize that there is ‘more to it than meets the eye’.

Try, if you will, for starters, the book and the tale I mentioned:

All emotions are essential to human life. Dealing with them is what it needs.

Awareness can help a great deal – in business just as much as in private life.

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The Princess, the Hero, the Dragon – Romance? – or: Romantic Love as a Life-long Project

drawing of book with 3D image of castle inside
Fairy stories have them all: The ‘romantic’ types of love that come with a sudden realization, or a ‘meet cute’ as they call it in Hollywood or on TV, or the hero slaying the dragon to save the ‘lady in distress’.

They are sweet, sometimes the rendering in stories is wonderfully done.
Yet, they end with the smile of two, or more, protagonists: Curtain.

Real life begins after that.

The idea of romance can have at least two types, it seems to me:
One is the image made up of ideas that recur at least since the middle-ages, including a couple of different archetypes as C.G. Jung identified them. It causes people to ‘run around’ with stars in their eyes.

The other is romance that combines the longing for true closeness and passion by knowing oneself and the other – and better over time.

At this point I’d like to reference a fine book here that ‘has it all’ for anyone who cares to read:

Steve and Shaaron Biddulph: The Making Of Love, 1999 and later, Doubleday Australia / Wie die Liebe bleibt (German)

Steve and Shaaron Biddulph, Australian couple of psychotherapist and social worker published their first edition of this truly funny, smart and warm-hearted look on love and how to keep it during the 1990s. It’s been revised a couple of times since then and is still one of my favourites on the subject.

Quote: “Love starts out as a blessing, even a fluke, but it continues as an achievement!”

What we tend to overlook in view of all those glittering pictures is the fact that we spend a lot of time and energy on the romance in the beginning – and then feel: ‘Ok, this is done. Let’s get back to business.’

Love is an achievement, knowing yourself, knowing the other – and it needs time and energy in order to work.

Know yourself and what you expect from a relationship – and then find and keep your partner in life.

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Mark Twain – Adam’s Diary – ‘The Garden without Eve?’ – An Extract….

roses sunny landscape dusk

Mark Twain, US-American literature’s founder he is called by many: Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn are the most famous of his books, Huckleberry Finn indeed being considered the beginning of the ‘American voice’. He was a man of all trades for a long time, Mark Twain, his stage name and pseudonym, being taken from his, Samuel L. Clemens’, favourite trade he learned before turning to ‘newspapering’:

‘Ol Man River’ Mississippi’s ships’ pilots and their calls: The Mississippi is known for many shoals and sandbanks with very low water above them. A pilot on that river would traditionally know these places by heart, interpret every gleam and slight ripple of waves on its surface, and call water depths to the captain when lowering the sounding lead into the treacherous waters:
“Mark Twain” being the call for 2 fathoms (12 feet) of water below the ship’s keel and thus:
Safe going.

This is one of his wonderful quotes I’d like to put here, from Extracts from Adam’s Diary, for all men who doubt it, even at work… The Garden without Eve?

‘Tongue in cheek’ I post it here…

“TEN YEARS LATER.—They are boys; we found it out long ago. It was their coming in that small immature shape that puzzled us; we were not used to it. There are some girls now. Abel is a good boy, but if Cain had stayed a bear it would have improved him. After all these years, I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; it is better to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her. At first I thought she talked too much; but now I should be sorry to have that voice fall silent and pass out of my life. Blessed be the chestnut that brought us near together and taught me to know the goodness of her heart and the sweetness of her spirit!”

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It’s a Wonderful World – Let’s Keep It That Way!

I created this little impression of how beautiful this world is, almost anywhere you care to look.
We do not have a ‘planet B’!
Even if people seem to explore the chances of ‘expanding’ into space one day: I wonder if we should look for solutions for problems elsewhere, when we created the problems here, in the first place. It might almost seem as if we were ‘dumping’ one planet for the sake of another? Like an old TV?

In this day and age it might seem, as if some countries are more fashionable – or more beautiful – or more fascinating than others.

To me, it is fascination all round – by differences – and the colourful way so many people, nations, regions and cultures exist, side by side, even at the same time, peacefully. Where contact and exchange of ideas make life everywhere so much more interesting and colourful.

It’s a wonderful world! Let’s keep it that way!

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The Kingfisher, the Nest and the Perspective – Keeping Busy?

two colourful birds on their perch

Commonly, at least in patriarchal society, rumour has it that men are apt, in long relationships, at least, to become more easily unfaithful than women.

For centuries, women were supposed to do everything they could to prevent that. Even were blamed if a divorce seemed inevitable, as a matter of course. To this day, even latently, women are afraid (some more than others, to be sure) they might lose him; feel compelled to ‘behave’ the way he needs it.

This also to some extent, alas, depends on the manner of independent means they possess: if they are dependent on the man for life support, the power balance is surely tilting to his side.

That is partly the reason why women started getting into ‘business’, taking up a profession: be of independent means so you do not have to ‘sell’ your soul and body to a husband.

Yet, over the centuries and to some extent to this day, it seemed more ‘natural’ for a man, looking at some species of animals too, to have more than one female companion/wife.

The kingfisher seems another of those examples that seem to ‘explain away’ why men are just unfaithful by nature, poor sods, and cannot help it, poor guys…

What if – we changed the perspective on this for a minute?
What if – women (female of the species) are far too busy once the young ones have arrived, with tending the nest and feeding them?
What if – being busy makes (independent) females often be more content with less than one male around?
What if – the male of the species just needs ‘to keep busy’, one way or another?
What if – you sat them plump down in the middle of the nest and let them take care of it?

What if – you take this to the human level – and see where it gets us? Try famous Austrian writer Arthur Schnitzler’s story, called “Traumnovelle”.

Perspective is key, most of the time!
This means: there are facts, pure and sometimes simple – and their interpretation.
Very often facts bear interpretation in more direction than one – or two.

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The Mirror Image Reversed – Focus on Strengths

theater masks

When Dorian Grey in the novel by Oscar Wilde looks into the mirror after having gone through a magical transfomation, he realizes that his painted picture ages. He does not, anymore.

After years of living the life many young men seem to dream about: racy, full of any kind of drunkenness by any kind of substance and any kind of ‘passion’, he still is a respected member of society, not to say upper class of the time in London. After some time people mildly wonder how he can stay young and fresh-faced, as if he was just twenty, but no one really cares to investigate.

At his death by murder, interestingly, he is found some day in the attic of his own house, in front of that omnious picture: only the story’s readers really know that the ugly, wrinkled, red-nosed, middle-aged drunk and libertine is Dorian Grey. After having died his body reveals all the ugliness of his soul: selfish and superficial.

The story is revealing in more senses than one. For me it is an essential ‘image’ of why and how human beings will some day be ‘visited’ with their own sins. By sins I do not mean what the Christian church called them who crudely threatened and especially in former centuries actually held their power over the majority of men and women that way; by making them afraid to ‘veer from the path of righteousness’ and by making out the church was the only hope of redemption, the ‘mass of men’ were held in dependence and fear.

It is the soul and what humans would find in life if they dare: not to go for the apparently big risks – but go for that which is the real path to love and happiness: live it, live peace, live care for others, neighbourly love and peaceful coexistence. And also know that none of us are angelic, while on earth, so have empathy, and remember that you need empathy and sympathy just as much. As human being.

The bible has another fine saying about this principle, yet: “Be as shrewd as snakes, and as innocent as doves.” Which means that you you should look out for yourself, but allow for any misinterpretations, and give yourself and others a chance. At real happiness.

What really makes the soul thrive and glow, is all the love you can find there, and live as much of it as possible.

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About Blogs, Texts – and Literary Rules

In literary research and in literature, it is one of the first rules: never assume that author and narrator are one and the same. The same is true for other kinds of texts, whichever they are.

A number of my readers may know this well anyway and take it for granted. Still, I’d like to point this out for all who might not know or be aware of this.

When I write here, about philosophical ideas or life, politics or love – you name it – most of what I write about, as all writers of any genre do and know too, originates in thoughts, very extensive reading throughout a lifetime (in my case), research, online and offline – and observation.

Writing about it does not necessarily mean that someone has seen or done something themselves.
To believe that would be gross, in some cases, but presumptuous at least.

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Peeping Toms – and Marys?


The ‘peeping Tom’ for generations has described aptly what I am about to deal with here: the secretly watching male, who’s too dumb for a vivid imagination and too cheap for spending money on the ‘real thing’:
the male (and female?) person who watches others using any kind of device, in the analogue days telescopes to catch at least glimpses of those others in ‘private states’:
any stage of undress, close encounters of the private and loving kind they miss out on themselves so sadly…

It is sometimes sad, sometimes frustrating, when you feel them about – and often just plain ridiculous and proof of very small minds.

They are not using the – especially these days – ample means and opportunities that often are even sold cheap online; not using the human imagination based perhaps on tales or books or even movies to make their own ‘reality’…

Woody Allen let one of his characters put it nicely in his comedy “Bullets over Broadway”: ‘reality is for those who cannot make their own.’

These days I presume, with so-called – in this respect – equality of the sexes around – women might be ‘peeping’ too; but that is a guess.

Just as in former centuries (married) men used to boast about their ‘adventures’, the nice term ‘swaggering’ makes it even clearer; while women were the ‘true gentlemen’, who relished in silence, even though from necessity rather than want…

To this day, the statistics in these matters especially are hard to determine and not easily published. Not all that is loudest is the most of any kind – or right….

The right to privacy is a human right and apart from an invasion into the privacy of those that are watched, it’s a punishable offence…

Still, all those who read this and start thinking: perhaps new ways can be found, anyway: there are those that seem to be the natural counterpart of peeping Toms or Marys: the exhibitionists…

So, inhibited masses, unite!

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Love – Human, Basic – Eternal?


Love is a human emotion. It’s one of the five basic ones. But its shapes are numerous: There’s friendship across and among the sexes, there’s love between parents and children and there’s romantic love, as well as bodily love, as the more ancient term has it.

Why would it be considered eternal?

Two very basic experiments and their results come to mind:
There was an ancient king, if I remember correctly, who was part of Greek mythology, although unfortunately his name escapes me at the moment: He wanted to know what babies really need to survive. He put a number of them into a secluded spot, where they were fed and clothed and taken care of – but not loved. They all died.

Now, as a myth, my readers might think, well…

But, in recent decades this has been confirmed in a most sad way: After WW II many babies were orphaned because of the war. Sometimes, just ‘lost’. But the same thing occurred and apparently people concerned found out by sad trial and error:
Babies that were kept warm, clean, clothed, well-fed, but unloved, not caressed or talked to, died. Healthy.

Consider what happens to grown-ups: when they feel ready to despair of love; lonely, depressed and devoid of hope, they suffer heart attacks and die. They may, tragically, commit suicide.

Hope is an emotion that is based on the idea that good will come. The confidence and trust that loved ones can invoke.

So, yes, in all the hard times that can be laid on human beings, and for all the hard ones I’ve seen, I still think, and consider myself lucky:

I’ve seen friendship, love, care of parents and relations. I’ve learned what helped me. Close to despair one day I met a person who without any apparent reason smiled at me, a warm smile. And suddenly I realized, what makes the sun rise in my heart:
Love, unconditional, in all its shapes.

The sound of it seems to be captured in the wonderful recording of Antonin Dvorak’s “From The New World”, his symphony no. 9, conducted by Ferenc Fricsay.
An excerpt of the most beautiful parts in the first movement here:

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