How to Save a Life: “Little Prince” Author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry on the Power of the Smallest Kindnesses
I didn“t lose an hour. I got one back. Cut out of the densely packed layers of timelines and plans. Probably this is what freedom looks like. An unexpected gift called “An Hour”.
Sometimes it is harder to accept presents and be thankful for them than to find and give a present to somebody else.
For this gift I have nobody to thank for. Still, I am grateful for this little piece of freedom. It’s a craft You have to learn, and if You’re good at it, life becomes a little more like spring.
I will miss my first meeting and am writing mails to re-organize my day. Inefficiency, that’s one way to see it.
But there’s another way. We’re gliding through little towns far off the main-route, as the train has to take a detour. There is the mist of early March on the fields. Some people around me are quietly making phone calls to re-organize their days. No-one is angry or agitated. Why should I be?
I can recall these feelings and some of them are still present somewhere in the back of my brain today, when I’m returning here.
Meanwhile the German trains are notorious for being late. I’m on a business trip and already built in a reserve of 30 minutes until my first meeting. Proves to not be sufficient: There was an announcement that we will be 60 minutes late. A whole hour of productivity lost.
A gift called „An Hour“.
For someone like me who’s not regularly travelling by train, it is still a little bit of an adventure. I remember my first conscious train trips as a kid, the wonder and excitement, being able to walk around while You’re travelling, the constant comforting and sullying noise that a train makes, the regular little bumps, the slight cracking of the chassis, the people murmuring around You.
#slowtravel #trainthoughts #stoicism #mindfulness #poetry #poeticprose
"Unlike colleagues of a previous generation, Kochetova does not labour under the illusion that a photograph might change history, or stop a war. Instead, in everything she does, she is trying to bring those who see her work towards an intimacy with individuals, towards a human connection that goes straight to the heart and has little to do with maps of the frontline, statistics on losses, or armchair military analysis."
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2026/feb/23/julia-kochetova-photographs-war-ukraine
From children’s funerals to underground shelters to the frontline, Kochetova has captured the conflict with power and humanity for the Guardian. ‘I have the same scars as the people I photograph,’ she says ahead of a major show
Nach dem Tod meines Vaters stehe ich gerade etwas ratlos vor seiner Märklin H0 Digital-Modellbahn.
Ich kenne mich damit kaum aus und weiß nicht so recht, wie man so etwas angemessen verkauft. Meine Mutter könnte das Geld gut gebrauchen, deshalb möchte ich nichts falsch machen oder unter Wert abgeben.
Das wird ein Projekt für Monate 🫣 Dutzende Züge, Anhänger, Modelle, Aufbauten samt Schienen.
Ich würde mich über boosts freuen, vielleicht hat jemand Erfahrungen?
One thing I’ve learned: many corrupt elites longed for too much — privilege, money, power.
They got it. It didn’t bring happiness.
High on the mountain top they had to face their own void. Some snapped.
Buddhism teaches humbleness, simplicity, compassion.
Maybe this grim knowledge helps us embrace those friendly thoughts from the shadows.
Of them there can’t be too much.
The Marginalian
Alex Plaum
BestMacFly