DISAGREEMENT AS PRACTICE
Every disagreement – even the tiniest quibble about how to correctly squeeze a tube of toothpaste – is a display of contradictory perspectives that, by definition, cannot co-exist in the very dimension in which they collide.
Anja Hartmann
Anja was born in Hamburg, educated in academia, groomed at top management consultancy McKinsey & Company, and nowadays gives advice to executives in business, NGOs, and the public sphere. She’s a long-term student of yoga and meditation, proud mother of a five-year old son, and author of the blog Bucketrides on leadership, sustainability, and all things human. Other LEVEKUNST articles by the same author.
EMBRACING LIES
When I hear that crows don’t have teeth, the world is flat, painted cows can be milked, energy equals mass multiplied by the speed of light squared, or nirvana is beyond extremes, I urge myself to have the discipline to examine and investigate what is being said, how those who’re saying it found their truth, and what their arguments and ways of thinking are.
BECAUSE I TOO TAKE REFUGE
These days, thousands and thousands of human beings are taking refuge in Europe and all over the world. They’ve left homes and jobs, families and friends, hopes, dreams, and plans for fulfilling futures for themselves and for their children. They’ve trekked across land and water, risking their lives with every step they took.
THE BARDO OF TRAVELING
The experience of traveling is one of our modern times’ equivalents to what Tibetan Buddhism describes as the bardo experience – a transitional state, in between something and something, where life is suspended, opening cracks through which to peek into spaces otherwise difficult to apprehend.
BEING A HERMIT IN POND OF SHARKS
In a slightly modified form, the question then reads: “What is it about me that makes me want to adopt both the life of a hermit and the life of a shark?”