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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Some seem young, although they have been retired for a long time. The others appear old, although they have not yet lived 30 years. Why is that? Is it the genes, is it the hardship of everyday life? Does the happy one seem younger than the one who is burdened by many worries?
At this point I could quote pages and pages of experts who know how people stay fit and healthy. Eat sensibly, exercise a lot, don’t smoke, don’t drink. I am convinced that all of this is important and right. But something else is on my mind – it’s the letters from my readers.
Last week I wrote about the summer of my childhood: time without limits, first trips, first dreams that came true. I received touching letters. The amazing thing: Anyone who was able to dream as a teenager continued to dream later – differently, more deliberately, more intensely. At least that’s what women and men who regularly read my column have written to me.
︎ A reader from Detmold: “Travelling was and is the greatest adventure of my life. My enthusiasm grows with age. I can’t see enough. And I’m always looking forward to the next holiday – even if the current one has only just begun…”
BILD columnist Louis Hagen
I think it’s the non-measurable values that keep us young. “The longer man remains a child, the older he becomes,” believed the romantic poet Novalis. I think it all comes down to one thing – the ability to be enthusiastic.
If you are interested in other people, if you are curious, if you love nature and respect animals, if you have hobbies that make you happy, if you bring passion into your everyday life – you have the chance to stay young at heart, no matter how old he really is.
Jean Paul (1736 to 1825), the creator of imperishable aphorisms, put this idea beautifully and aptly in a nutshell:
One is young as long as one is enthusiastic about the beautiful and does not allow it to be smothered by the useful.
Jean-Paul
* 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.
