The magic bowl

The end of the year is fast approaching. For many people this is a time to reflect on what they hope the coming year will bring and plan for what they intend to do. And for some people it’s a time to stand back a little and ask themselves what really is important in their life.

Recently I was invited to take part in a panel discussion at the European Forum Alpbach in the Tyrol. This place has the reputation of being “the most beautiful village in Austria”. I used one of the breaks to take a stroll around the village and take a closer look at it, and to my astonishment I saw that each house looks exactly like all the others – a stone ground floor painted white and the upper floors built of dark wood with balconies and each street-side balcony decorated with a profusion of red geraniums in full bloom. Never before had I seen such uniformity in any town or village. It was fascinating but also strange at the same time. And I began to wonder whether such rigorous conformity really could be beautiful. 

“Sweet sleep! You come like pure good fortune, unasked for, most readily when not implored.” (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe).
Poets of all ages have sung the praise of sleep. Sleep puts us in a kind of limbo where without any agency of our consciousness, our minds process what we have experienced, order and react to it. Sleep is indispensable and precious. And yet for a long time I’ve had a feeling that in our modern culture sleep is not given the importance it deserves so that some people even consider it as wasted time. As though our lives only consisted of one single reality.