We need to try the impossible for the possible to happen.*
H.Hesse

Back in college, my first class teacher wrote me this sentence in my autograph book (yes, they were still common in those days). While it is clearly true for any scientific or technical achievement, it also holds for our personal lives: we grow with the challenges we take, we grow when we dare. No matter if successful or not.
Getting older is not growing. While we grow for the things we have done, we get older rather for the things we stop doing. We get older because we stop playing (well, some never do…), because we stop asking, because we stop exploring. We get older when we run out of projects, when we lose the trust in our dreams, when we cease to expect the more from life.
Some are old when they are young, reckoning to know already all about life, and they may get younger as they grow. Most people get older when they, looking for safety, enter predefined career paths, when they arrange with the existing as it is. We are the best educated generation in Germany ever, the globalized world offers a wealth of possibilities and challenges never known before, and we should dare more, we should head for more than to become the Senior Vice Brand Manager in the marketing department of L’Oreal, say. This is kappes, the world deserves more from us. Remember the words of B.Obama about N.Mandela: „what people can reach when they are led by their hopes and not by their fears…“
In this new year, for your projects, I wish you all the best:
be true to your dreams! Don’t settle. Keep on running. Stay hungry, stay foolish!

Dieser Beitrag ist zu ihrem baldigen Geburtstag meiner Mutter gewidmet, deren jugendlicher Offenheit für Erfahrung, deren unstillbarem Erfahrungshunger ich so viel verdanke.

*“Es muß immer wieder das Unmögliche versucht werden, damit das Mögliche entsteht.“