A Measure of Calm
My maternal grandfather, a very calm untroubled man, was fond of saying: “In hundert Jahren ist Alles eins.”
Roughly translated this means “In a hundred years all is equal.”
I was a child at the time — too young to fully comprehend his meaning. Now, as I enter my eightieth year, I have a far better understanding.
My grandfather was an interesting man. Born in a castle in Bohemia to a family that also owned a linen factory, bleach works and brewery, he had a comfortable start in life. Certainly, as he grew to manhood he had no money worries.
Then the war came and Hitler invaded, taking over the castle and changing the whole landscape, along with family fortunes. After Hitler, the Communists did their bit, turning the castle into apartments for factory workers and confiscating the family’s other assets.
By the time I met my grandfather, on St Stephan’s Platz, when I was fourteen, he was living in a shabby one-room basement flat in Vienna. Having suffered greatly during the war and in its aftermath, he was now a free man, but no longer a rich one.
In fact he was very poor, although my mother helped him financially from her home in England when she could, as did his son, my uncle, who was Ireland-based.
The problem was that he had never acquired a ‘work habit’, nor learned to budget, so he always ran short of cash sooner than he might have done.
But I noticed that he was a happy man and asked him about the source of his happiness.
That’s when he told me of his philosophy. When times were hard, as they frequently were, he asked himself how much it would matter in 100 years — or even in one year. He said something else that I’ve always remembered:
“I can breathe the same Viennese air that I breathed as a rich man. So, rich or poor, what is the real difference? The key to happiness is not to possess, but to breathe in peace.”
Who can argue with his belief?
