The Beginning of a Next Stage

Cool! For some years now, this word like no other has re-emerged to become our common currency for describing what we find good or great, for describing what moves us. Yet most of the time we ourselves are anything else but cool. We’re living in a touchy-feely time, a time of emotional extremes as Wolf Lotter puts it in a recent issue of brand eins, and I would certainly agree with his diagnosis. Yet how does coolness shape up with emotional extremes? For many people authenticity is the magic word that makes all contradictions vanish. Yet does its magic really work?

Imagine a lion in its natural state and natural habitat: if you wanted to approach it you’d probably have to be in some protective cage to avoid death or injury. Now imagine a lion in a zoo and you know that you can get very close to him without the slightest fear because it’s now he who is enclosed in the cage. The price for such an easy encounter with a lion is paid by the lion himself. The price he pays for the zoo visitors’ pleasure is life-long imprisonment.

Last weekend I was sitting in a street café enjoying the glorious spring weather and quite by chance I overheard two women sitting at the next table talking. All one of them could do was to moan to such an extent that I wondered whether there was anything in this world that could possibly be a source of satisfaction to her. In my own immediate circles I hardly know anybody who has such a tendency.  

Actually it was rather a banal conversation but it still got me thinking about how differently people view and assess their own life situations. And about how sometimes it's those people who lead really easy lives who whinge and moan most loudly about the wrongs of this world while others, whose lives are not easy by any stretch of the imagination, seem to be illuminated by a kind of inner contentment.