What comes to mind when you hear the word NOW? This question caught me in the latest CreativeMornigs-newsletter (which I highly recommend to you!). In general, the thoughts and businesses of Tina Roth Eisenberg (swissmiss) are worth a ‘visit’. This woman is so inspiring!
Anyway, it made me think (once again). What does NOW stand for? I have to admit that this word has not caused me any euphoria at all. The state of the Western world (I limit myself to the part of the world in which I live and which I can halfway judge) is disastrous. There is war in Europe. Pandemic, global warming, inflation. You all know it anyway. People are dying or fleeing or fighting. And it’s not all rosy in my little world either, I’m struggling with my motivation to stick to my tasks, whether they are self-chosen or externally determined. Considering the suffering of others, I am almost ashamed to be so lethargic and unproductive, not even managing to complete what is on my insignificant to-do list.
Nevertheless, we can only ever live our own lives. And that is happening NOW.
“It is quite true what philosophy says, that life must be understood backwards. But we forget the other sentence, that life must be lived forwards,” says the certainly controversial Danish philosopher _Sören Kierkegaard 1.
Last night I started writing in my personal journal again (it used to be called a diary, but it seems to make me even older than I already am). It helped me to focus a little more. And I attended a lecture by the wonderful Lisa Welchman on the subject of ethics as part of my studies in Content Strategy at the FH Joanneum, Graz. She asked us beforehand to watch two videos (Aristotle and Kant) and to answer questions about them. On the same day, I had a complicated dental treatment and decided to just listen for the time for once. But the topic was so exciting that I couldn’t help it, I had to share my thoughts with her. Not because I had such important things to say, but because she is an absolutely motivating person and made me put my cool pack aside for a moment. And she did something else — she interwove two aspects of philosophy with our core topic:
The golden mean of virtues and the categorical imperative. Aristotle and Kant. Two completely abstract thought constructs that have absolutely nothing to do with the NOW. But they give stability. They can be a guideline, an aid with which one can question one’s own actions and readjust them if necessary.
After all, if you question your motives, look at your zeal and realise that it is too much of a good thing, you can ‘slow down’ a bit with the thought construct of the golden mean. Conversely, one can look at and evaluate a ‘sag’ and then realise that it could have been done with less self-pity and get up off one’s butt.
And if you ask yourself whether the principles of your actions are universally valid, you can check whether you are adhering to your self-chosen laws or principles. The example described very drastically in the video has already led to lively discussions in the Stebner house, thank you Lisa!
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History helps us to make sense of the present. I read this sentence recently, but I can’t remember where. And I question whether it is true in the sense of the categorical imperative. What would be the point of a killing machine like the one Hitler installed with millions of accomplices? What is the point of the war Putin is waging right now? How can one ‘understand’ this in a few years? Presumably this ‘wisdom’ is to be considered in a smaller scale. You can’t call the loss of a loved one something ‘meaningful’, but you can try to categorise the circumstances that led up to it (and yes, I know what it feels like to lose a loved one far too soon).
But I also know that you can and must live with that pain. Now and always. Hermann Hesse writes in the last four lines of his poem ‘Stufen’ (Stairs), which also appeared in his last work ‘Das Glasperlenspiel’ 2
(The Glass Bead Game) in 1943:
Es wird vielleicht auch noch die Todesstunde
Uns neuen Räumen jung entgegen senden,
Des Lebens Ruf an uns wird niemals enden,
Wohlan denn, Herz, nimm Abschied und gesunde!(Perhaps even the hour of death
Send us towards new rooms youthful,
Life’s call to us will never end,
Well then, heart, take leave and be healed!)
And here we come full circle to the NOW in a positive sense:
Most people will probably remember the words
‚Und jedem Anfang wohnt ein Zauber inne,
der uns beschützt und der uns hilft, zu leben.’(‘And in every beginning there is a magic,
“that protects us and helps us to live.)
will be familiar. They are the last two lines of the first stanza of this poem.
In times like these, the NOW should take on greater significance. That is what I want to firmly resolve to do. This ‘live as if it were the last day’ is somewhat alien to me, but I will try to live a little more NOW. Who knows what will happen later. :)
1 Die Tagebücher. Deutsch von Theodor Haecker. Brenner-Verlag 1923, S. 203
2 https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Glasperlenspiel
