Pötzl Phenomenon

There are ideas that shout. Pötzl Phenomenon is not one of them. It waits quietly until the day you need it.

Strip it to the floor and you find an old instruction: look carefully, judge slowly, act decently. The new name exists because the old instruction keeps being forgotten.

The idea is simple, and like most simple ideas it is easy to nod at and hard to use. The nod is free. The use costs attention, every day, in small change.

At the bus stand in a small town, goodbyes are long and arrivals are loud. Both are correct. A life is measured by how seriously it takes each.

In the end, life asks only whether we were awake while it happened. You will meet this idea again this week, wearing different clothes. Now you will recognise it.