Posted by Jessica
I feel very honored to be the first “guest” to contribute to Nick’s Map Room blog, which has already garnered a steady community of readers from around the globe.
In this series of posts, I would like to focus on a topic that is relevant to all of us, every single day, no matter where we are in the world. It can be considered a friend with whom we build beautiful memories, but can also be seen as the greatest enemy we face in life. The topic of which I am speaking is TIME.
I recently came upon a deep and inspiring analysis about the phenomenon of time and its influence on our lives and on society at large. The book was written by Rüdiger Safranski, a German philosopher who was born in the south of my home country in 1945, just after the Second World War had ended. Safranski has spent his life studying and writing about some of the greatest figures in German philosophy and their ideas, including Schiller, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Heidegger. Some of Safranski’s own works include Wieviel Globalisierung verträgt der Mensch? (“How Much Globalization Can A Human Being Take?”), Wieviel Wahrheit braucht der Mensch? (“How Much Truth Do We Need?: About the Thinkable and the Livable”), and Das Böse oder Das Drama der Freiheit (“Evil or the Drama of Freedom”). His most recent piece – entitled Zeit (“Time”) – is dedicated to the different forms that time can take: the time of boredom, the time of new beginnings, the time of sorrow, socialized and cultivated time, the time of life and outer space, and finally, fulfilled time and eternity.
Time is a strange thing. Living day by day and following our regular patterns, time does not mean anything in particular to us. In present day, we live in such fast-moving environments that it seems difficult for us to experience the richness of time, and to realize the fact that there is no “replay button” – not for you, nor me, nor anyone else. Every second that passes is a portion of time that we cannot get back, which cannot be re-lived.
Now… as a reader of this blog post, I hope you do not leave this site right away out of fear of losing more of these valuable seconds. Instead, I hope you will dedicate some of them to reflect on how you can more carefully deal with time as a precious commodity, so that – in the end – time has not only done something to you, but you also made something out of it.
Part 1: The Time of New Beginnings
A new book, a new hobby, a new haircut, a new job – everyone has had a new beginning. In every new beginning lies the chance for transformation, to change something from what it was like before. We make use of a new chapter to shake off something that has bound us to the past.
One way that many of us seek to make a new start is by trying to forget something from the past – whether it is a negative experience, a negative relationship, or a negative outcome. On the one hand, this is a natural human mechanism for coping with difficult circumstances or mistakes we’ve made. We should certainly not dwell on the negativity or guilt of the past, because this robs us of the joy of the moment, right now. However, trying to forcefully forget our past is a superficial act. It is like trying to put makeup over an old scar to hide a story we’d rather not tell. A new beginning can only occur after each of us has accepted who he or she really is, with all of the scars and imperfections that may exist. Therefore, the relationship between past and present becomes a question of power – do we let the past rule over us? Or do we master it?
The story that is mentioned in Safranski’s book is that of a former SS-official named Dr. Hans Schneider, who used to be in charge of providing propaganda to the higher education system in Germany and its occupied territories. On 2nd May 1945 – five days before the official surrender of the Nazi regime – Schneider turned himself in to the authorities at Lübeck, pretending to have lost his papers during the War and stating his name as Hans Schwerte. By trying to take on a new identity, he intended to leave behind his past as a Nazi and make a new beginning.
Dr. Hans Schneider, receiving one of his many academic medals while teaching under the alias Hans Schwerte in 1983. (Das Hochschularchiv „Gedächtnis der RWTH Aachen“)
It turned out that under his new name, Hans “Schwerte” could lead a rather happy and successful “new” life. He re-married his wife (who kept his secret once they had reunited), studied literature, wrote his dissertation on the concept of time, and lectured at several universities (including those to which he formerly provided Nazi propaganda material). He went on to win several academic medals, and finally retired as a recipient of the Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. So far so good, as his “new beginning” spared him public humiliation and repentance. But in 1994, just a few years before his death, Dutch journalists uncovered Dr. Schneider’s true identity and published his life story. His defense at the age of 86 was that he had “de-nazified” himself. He was swiftly stripped of all his professorships and academic medals (including the Cross of Merit) and died in Bavaria in 1999.
This case demonstrates that life allows the opportunity for many new beginnings, even if they result in a brutal cut with the past. Indeed, life even affords us many chances to cover up our scars and pretend things are fine for a very long time. After all, Hans Schneider’s life did not fall apart simply by taking on another identity in post-war Germany, so maybe there is room for more than one biography in a human lifetime. But ultimately, the story teaches us that new beginnings cannot be made by simply forgetting the past and putting on a new mask. New beginnings are only possible when we face our mistakes and take full responsibility for the time we have left.
Patrick Stewart on the meaning of Time (Star Trek Generations, 1994)