“I slammed on the brakes and became a lot more unsafe.”

In the first week of the ninth Winter Hour season, Wim Helsen received four seemingly resilient guests whose feet increasingly wandered over the crumbling edges of the valley as the years passed. This doesn’t seem to bother them much. They derived solace from her. new Horizons. The skin is smooth.

They were all praised for their difficult pursuit of meaning. Viewpoints have changed. Amazement and self-reflection went hand in hand toward the horizon. They become part of an expanded field of vision. A light at the end of the tunnel was not necessarily the end goal, but rather the catalyst that made the journey through the darkness worthwhile.

Jonas Gernert – cosmic comedian, absurdist philosopher – has chosen a text by the American astronomer and astrophysicist Carl Sagan: a reflection that reinforces, in every way, the unbearable lightness of being. But Gernert resisted nihilism and the trade in doom, although not without a tinge of melancholy. Was it the apparent resignation with which he sat next to Helsen on the sofa? Or flowed to him Che Simply in the right direction? The text was accompanied by an image showing the Earth as an unsightly blue dot. That picture was on Gernert’s desk. That’s all you need to know about someone.

And look, he decorated it in blue Winter hour Subordinate the morning– Journalist Catherine Swartenbrock, who read part of blue By Maggie Nelson. Today, Swartenbrock seems to be quickly turning around the lack of choice that this text suggests. Her new post-Depression world unfolded, the color blue extending from navy blue to jet black. It is clear that she has gained peace of mind in searching and doubting, or at least we like to stubbornly remember that, because we also have a brother who has lost the unshakable wisdom of life.

Resilience

Broadcaster Anne Van Elsen approached her existential doubts in a slightly different way. She delved deep into herself until she found a reflection she could work with. With something like this Girls and women with autism From autism specialist Sarah Hendricks as a guideline. Motivated by Van Elsen’s daughter who wandered somewhere across the “spectrum.” Van Elsen looked down at his lap and saw the similarities. “It made me slam on the brakes and I became much more unsafe.” She said. “I stopped saying things or looking at how others did them and imitating them. This makes me wonder if what I have done so far has been a result of my true personality. Or rather a combination of that copied identity and the desire to be recognized as okay.” So I plunged into the tunnel. She waved her torch dangerously in the air stream to the exit door where a compensating light bulb flickered.

Was it the big light bulb of VRT journalist Johan op de Beek? He paid tribute to humanity’s resilience with a piece by Jean Dormisson I always liveIt is a French masterpiece that he had recently translated. “If you look at history, people crawl through deep valleys of misery but they always climb out and come out better than ever.” Custom op de bec.

The rest of that evening saw faint flashes of news coming out of Gaza.

Winter hourVRT Canvas, 11 p.m.