WORK + LIFE
Life stories make us who we are.
Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass, but learning to dance in the rain.
No one can say that I have not tried it.
From temporary jobs of a few days up to fourteen years with a company. What does it take to discover the secret of a fulfilled life? The story of one who has set out on a journey…
Life stories make us who we are.
We come into the world with an inner sensory and cognitive apparatus that is shaped by our millions of years of tribal history. This adventure of our condensed history is followed by our, no less breathtaking individual history. Quite early on, my apparatus conveyed to me that I found myself in a jungle in which behind every obstacle a new path, a new branch, opens up that I could or could not follow. Oh, if only I were a millipede, I could walk all these paths and discover their secret. This was not the case, so I spent the first few years in the silent wonder of the world.
Relatively soon this concept could not be pursued further,
so I faced the sometimes annoying demands of my fellow world and followed the given paths of knowledge with more or less success. Even as a schoolboy I was already working as a bicycle mechanic, weed picker in the beet fields of the Rhineland, can opener in the ketchup factory, porcelain burner, asbestos plate manufacturer, piano mover, moped dealer, was a construction worker, industrial cleaner, private tutor, storyteller, pilgrim and dancer at noble balls. The jungle did not reveal its secret.
So I decided to get to the bottom of it academically
and enrolled myself in a General Science program.
Sinology was not offered that year. This drove me out into the world, I found myself as a well builder in Thailand, mineral trader in the Maghreb, car pusher in the Sahel, was arrested in Algeria, mapped mountain villages in the Himalayas, escaped captors in Nigeria, paddled in a dugout canoe to the Pygmies in Cameroon, and finally held a degree in Earth Sciences in my hands. Slowly, the contours of the veil began to emerge.
Die Reise ging weiter, ich versetzte Erzberge in Persien,
cooked precious metals from Siberian rock, built mills in Mauritania, purified synthetic antibiotics in India, fermented penicillin in China, processed cobalt in Katanga, blew coal dust into Polish power plants. Finally, I met my first real challenge, I took on responsibility, married a wonderful woman and we were given wonderful children. The challenge continued: she left this world too early. I married again a wonderful woman, and we were given the same wonderful children again. The veil began to lift and reveal its secret.
Besides all the achievements of my journeys inside and outside,
i.e. amazement, knowledge, friendships, creations, God experiences, a constant companion on my journeys… there has also been this one perspective: the view into the abyss. Awareness does not get along without it. It is also the losses that shape us, as in my case idealistic and material losses, losses through illness and death, losses of basic trust in the world, job losses. But also these let us experience the mystery of creation and approach to it.
After all these perils, the one that gets lighter opens,
but still the mysterious jungle…now a further road: together with Carmen we have developed a platform for people, who sooner or later, more or less, stronger or weaker, have reached this point, namely to recognize that we all, despite sometimes persistent determination, have walked this meandering path, that we find ourselves in the stories of others, in order to continue to walk our paths curiously, energetically, attentively and mutually inspiring.
