What would you say, if someone asks:
“What impresses you the most about Europe?”

The fantastic Architecture!
The amazing History!
The great Culture!
The unprecedented Collections of Fine Art!
Savoir vivre!
The astounding unity in utmost cultural diversity!
The cradel of humanity’s most valuable treasure: Classical Music.

 

Derek Walcott, Nobel Prize winner for literature in 1992, answered:
“People are talking about the weather all the time.”

Gulp.
What?

The author Walcott was born in Saint Lucia, a beautiful island in the Caribbean.
This means sunshine, sunshine and more sunshine, 12 months a year.
And also palm trees, turquoise ocean reflections and exotic birds 365 days.

Something many Europeans dream about!
In all of our clouds, rains, storms, showers and snow we ware fascinated by stable sunny conditions. And beach rats of the tropics are intrigued by all this changing humidity, cloud formations, magnetism and lights.

Humans are truly wonderous creatures. When we can choose between celebrating what we do have we choose dreaming about what we don’t have.

Martin Luther King jr. did not say: Oh my God, thanks for all the good stuff in my life!
He famously said: “I have a dream.”

The question is always: What happens next?
What if Walcott decides to move to Paris. Would the weather still be fascinating after 4 months of rain, icy conditions and smog all winter long?

Or would he go home to Saint Lucia, take his flip flops and sunglasses out and praise the sun for shining so nicely all day long, all year round?

I don’t know about you.
But still, my answer would be: The best about Europe is classical music…
😊

Much love,
Anselma

 

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Do you remember those days when stress was something only super highpayed managers would have?
Do you remember the phone answering machine? At first, our grandmas had this job until we bought this very modern little black boxes.
When the first of my friends showed up at our house with a cell phone in his hand, we girls laughed at him and said teasingly: “You feel pretty important, don’t you?”

Today everyone is overwhelmed and available 24/7.
Most people I know say this is because of the kids: “They need to reach me.”
When we were little, there were no cell phones around – not even an answering machine and in many cases no grandma, too.

And still we managed to grow up.
How did that happen? A true miracle!!

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What do thoughts and dust bunnies have in common?

(Dust bunnies are these little creatures behind your door that have a secret life on their own. They magically appear without anybody doing anything. A truly mystical genesis! Unfortunately they don’t disappear the same way. Only when someone takes heart and vacuums them away.)

So, what do they have in common?
You can take them personally – or not.

 

Dust bunnies just appear.
We can all experience this.
Everyone who lives in some sort of a rectangular shelter – not in a yurt or a tepee! – has at some point seen those guys.
(Men usually tend to see them later, I don’t know why.)

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When Einstein was asked to explain his theory of relativity in simple terms he said: “An hour sitting with a pretty girl on a park bench passes like a minute, but a minute sitting on a hot stove seems like an hour.”

I love this quote, because it applies to just about every walk of life. We tend to think our perspective is the truth. But what it actually is, is just our perspective.

 

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The other day I read a beautiful story, told by a lady that is providing outdoor adventure camps for teens. Every evening they have this culture of sitting together at the campfire and talking about the day and their personal experience.

One evening a kid said, that her tent mate said something hurtful, a loose comment that caused pain. The lady then walked to her tent and brought a tube of toothpaste with her. She squeezed the tube and out came a little bit of toothpaste. Then she demonstrated that it was nearly impossible to get the toothpaste back into the tube.

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The renowned German Stretta Music, well known specialist and a worldwide leading online store in sheet music asked me for an interview. What an honor and privilege for me to give some of my lousy ideas and to manipulate interested folks towards being major bassoon fans! :o)

Here some parts of this interview. I hope it makes you smile here and there! I had the greatest fun answering :o) Please find the whole article HERE.

With so much love,
Anselma

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In the eastern way of thinking, we are better off in life when we stay away from extremes.
I have to admit that I initially did have trouble grasping this.

First, because in many cases only extremes lead to progress.
Change is hard. Think practicing more or eating less.
We do have habits and they get a life of themselves and don’t want to be eliminated. Only if it gets really bad, only if we experience an extreme, we are motivated enough to move our butts and invest into making progress.

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When I was in school, we were forced to write about super boring stuff. Our assignments were something like this:
How do you interpret the first two lines of this experimental poem by the experimental postmodern existentialist Marc Peeperboozle (and it followed some nonsensical or absurd text no one would ever read voluntarily).

Of course – you guessed it – I never wrote what we were asked to.
Instead, I wrote what I was thinking because, hej THAT’S what writing is all about. Expressing the heart, sharing ideas and cultivating creativity. And sometimes calling a spade a spade.

 

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When I was a kid, I was quite a lousy violin player. People kept telling me how talented I was, but at times this made me feeling really bad. My bad conscience grew bigger and bigger because I was only practicing once a week (right before the lesson!). It almost felt like a betrayal of some sort. I got laurels without making much of an effort.

 

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When I was a kid people kept telling me that I would be talented. Of course, I liked that. Who would not? And I did more of what I seemed to be talented in, clever little me :o)
Pawlow’s dog was fully alive in me: Make music, get some cookies.
When I got older something started to shift. Suddenly – to my disliking – the label “talented” somehow faded. All of the sudden it was not enough any more to be talented. That was too bad!

What increasingly counted was something not so cozy: WORK.
I kind of resisted this. And I had to put in more and more effort to keep the glorious myth of a talented girl alive.
My epiphany really struck when I talked to a Russian piano teacher.
He told me: “In Russia it is simple: the one who practices most is the most talented.”

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