Then Dr. AuDHS stepped up to the lectern.
He did not come solemnly, not like a priest; he also did not come hastily, like a manager who is on a tight schedule. He came the way someone comes who knows the room as his medium: with a naturalness that is neither vanity nor shame, but profession. He wore – and that was disheartening, because it suited him so well – a jacket that smelled at once of doctor and of start-up; and on his lapel he wore that little badge Hans had already seen once in the morning in the library, that little badge that did not say “Name” but “Function”:
Dr. AuDHS.
He positioned himself behind the lectern, placed his hands on the edge as if he wanted to check whether it was really there, and raised his gaze.
This gaze, esteemed reader, dear reader, was remarkable.
It was not stern. It was not soft. It was of the kind one finds in people who have learned both: professional distance – and private involvement. He did not look “over” the guests, like a speaker who is already in the next sentence; he looked at them as if they were a problem he took seriously. And in this seriousness there lay, as always with him, a fine nuance of amusement, as if he knew that seriousness without irony has something inhuman about it.
“Good evening, everyone,” he said. “Nice that you are here.”
He made a small pause – not out of uncertainty, but as if he were setting the tempo.
“I would like to talk today about a dilemma that many of us know,” he continued, “even if we rarely call it that. A dilemma that seems paradoxical.”
He did not look at notes. He had some – you could see it from a tablet that lay next to the microphone, black, flat, silent; but he did not use it. He spoke as if he were speaking from an inner script that had been written long ago.
“We live in a time of abundance,” he said, “and yet an astonishing number of people feel inwardly scarce. Scarce in calm. Scarce in meaning. Scarce in genuine joy of life.”
Hans felt how his ring on his finger – one could swear it did – grew warmer. A reflex perhaps, an illusion; but illusion is, as we know, one of the most reliable realities.
“And that is exactly where,” said Dr. AuDHS, “our topic begins.”
He leaned forward a little. He did not do it to threaten; he did it to create closeness. The red column next to him shone as if it wanted to support him.
“We live in a saturated society,” he said. “For the vast majority of us, the basic needs are covered: clean water, food, a roof over our heads, clothing, medical care. We do not have to fight every day for bare survival.”
He let the sentence stand as if it were a foundation.
“And yet many of us are constantly on the move,” he continued. “Not just ‘very busy’. But inwardly driven. The calendar is full. The phone is full. The to-do list is full. And still: inside something is empty. Or restless. Or both.”
You could hear someone in the room set down their glass, a small clink that sounded like a comment in the silence.
“We spend a large part of our time serving the expectations of others, fulfilling procedures, playing roles – often in jobs that do not really fulfill us,” he said. “And even when we have free time, we experience something strange: we are stressed and bored at the same time.”
He smiled briefly, not at the people, but at the absurdity.
“How can that be?”
He left the question hanging in the air as if it were a bird that did not want to land.
“A large part of the answer,” he said, “lies in what is called the hedonistic hamster wheel.”
Hans thought of the hamster wheel. He thought of curves, of rest halls, of the monotonous order of the Berghof – and of how the wheel there was different: not consumption, but illness; not buying, but temperature. But a wheel was a wheel.
“We run,” said Dr. AuDHS. “We work. We earn. We consume. We are happy – briefly. Then it fades. And before we even notice what is happening, the next desire arises. And the next. And again from the beginning.”
He made a small circular motion with his hand. It was almost childlike. And it was very precise.
“The hamster wheel is not just ‘buying’,” he continued. “It is a mechanism: a little high. A short kick. A quick peak. Then normalization. Then emptiness. Then the next impulse.”
He said “impulse” with an emphasis that revealed he knew the word not only from psychology, but from himself.
“Advertising and media reinforce this,” he said. “They train our attention on things: clothing, cars, technology, luxury goods, services. They do not just sell products – they sell promises: ‘If you have this, then…’”
And now – here something happened that one could, if one is strict, call theater; if one is mild, pedagogy: he made a short pause, as if he were hearing these promises inside himself, and then he continued them like a chorus.
“…then you are more beautiful. …then you are freer. …then you are more successful. …then you have finally arrived.”
The word “arrived” sounded in the music room, in this room of transitions, like a joke.
“And we often buy things we do not really need,” he said, “and pay for them with something we never get back: lifetime.”
Hans involuntarily looked outside. There was time, there was green, there was a world that could not be bought. And yet he sat here, in comfort, in the speech, in the optimization.
“And science,” said Dr. AuDHS, “is quite clear at this point: pure consumption, pure hedonism – twenty-four hours a day – does not make us permanently happy.”
He raised his index finger, not in a lecturing way, but to mark something.
“Even people who could afford everything do not live in a permanent ‘more’,” he said. “Not because they could not, but because it does not work. The system gets used to it. The stimulus becomes normal. The level rises. The bar too.”
He looked into the room as if searching for the bar that hangs invisibly above the heads.
“We need more than consumption,” he said.
And now his voice became a tone warmer, almost – but only almost – pathetic.
“We need goals. We need meaning. We need a structure that not only keeps our life busy, but fulfills it.”
Hans heard the word “structure” like an old song. Structure was Berghof. Structure was rest cure. Structure was time. Structure was also the ring.
