The Mind behind the Reflections

This page is about the person behind the images, words, thoughts and stories that have found a place here.

I was born in northern Germany in the spring of 1986 and began weaving stories at the age of twelve,
slipping out of a reality that sometimes felt too restless into worlds of my own. By fourteen, drawing and painting had joined in.

When I started training as a nurse at sixteen and gradually stepped into adult life,
these hobbies moved more and more into the background.
Even during my training, I chose to accompany people on their final path.
As meaningful and important as I found this work, I also increasingly felt how my own joy in life was becoming quieter.
I wrote less, and drawing was the first thing to disappear from my everyday life.

At some point I lost my sense of the world’s beauty, and with it a part of my own vitality.
In that moment it became clear that something had to change,
and I decided, in my thirties, to begin a degree course again.

My first subject was Korean Studies, which probably surprised most people around me.
Shortly before I started, I first became consciously aware of Korean through conversations with others.
During my studies, however, it became clear that language learning is not one of my greatest strengths,
which is not ideal for a subject so centred on language. 

The programme relied heavily on memorisation and reproduction,
which makes sense if the language is meant to be used continuously later on.
But I realised that I did not just want to use the language, I wanted to truly understand it.
For that, I would have needed more time than I had. In addition, the programme offered only limited professional prospects for me.
After changing subjects, I set Korean aside completely for a while and only later returned to it more deliberately,
 deepening it to the point where I could begin to formulate my thoughts in it.

My second subject, Comparative Literature, which I studied alongside Korean Studies, came much more naturally to me.
But here, too, learning another language was part of the plan;
I chose Spanish. That was when I realised that I mainly use languages in order to read,
to understand connections and to gain information.
When it comes to speaking a language actively, I tend to withdraw.

In the end, I switched almost blindly from Korean Studies to Philosophy.
I had little idea of what to expect in concrete terms
and I was not one of those people who had read piles of philosophical works beforehand.
That made the beginning difficult, but over time I became more familiar with the terrain.
In the philosophy of language in particular, I have found a place where I feel very much at home.
In combination with Comparative Literature,
I enjoy analysing symbols, motifs, tropes and words in texts
and thinking about which spaces of meaning they open up,
without drawing direct conclusions about the person who wrote them.

A text, to me, is an entity in its own right.
It carries the author in its heart, but especially the philosophy of language shows how words hold different suggestions and resonances.
A single word can set off a multitude of thoughts, images and reflections.
It is precisely these differences in inner movement that make a text special to me.

Out of these experiences grew the wish to create a space like the Sea of Reflection:
 a place where something creative is allowed to arise now and then, so that everyday life does not cover everything over again;
a space where thoughts can arrive like waves and find a place to rest.
Perhaps others will feel moved by those inner motions and discover,
in them, a small place to pause and breathe in a world that so often leaves little time for rest.