Your Currency of Happiness

English translation of the German song of Maik Baum: Alchimist am Rande der Welt:

Maik Baum I Alchimist am Rande der Welt 🌍

Alchemist at the Edge of the World

I walk into a café at the edge of the world.

There sits an alchemist, telling a story.

His quiet, wise eyes pull me into their orbit.

And with some very famous words, he begins:

There once was a girl, just seven years old.

She walked barefoot across the asphalt.

With her eyes she saw all the wonders of the planet—how bumblebees moved through the evening sunlight.

The girl’s eyes were shining, a smile on her lips.

Her toes began to tap a little faster.

She danced through warm colors, over every obstacle,wanting to know from every stone what might be hidden behind it.

If happiness were a currency, what would make you rich?

If time ran out, tell me—what would remain?

Because 10, 20, 30 years fly by so fast.

One loop after another, the girl grows up.

She doesn’t quite know why she stops being playful,but that’s just what people do.

That’s how things are done.

And after all, it worked for Mom and Dad too.

The girl looks up into a sky full of stars, blinded by the cold light of the street lamps. “Tell me, why am I here? Who do I want to be?” her words echo into the darkness.

If happiness were a currency, what would make you rich?

If time ran out, tell me—what would remain?

Because 10, 20, 30 years fly by so fast.

The girl—now grown—is an adult, and now called a woman.

Morning coffee, bad night’s sleep, she gets up slightly hungover.

Short hair, lightly done-up, fond of wearing grey.

But even she doesn’t quite know why she gets up today.

Day after day, she takes the same tram into the city center.

Comparisons with others steer every one of her steps.In the hallway photos, she tries to smile,and cleans up quickly before visiting relatives arrive.

Tell me, if happiness were a currency, what would make you rich?

If time ran out, tell me—what would remain?

Because 10, 20, 30 years fly by so fast.

The girl is now a grandmother, old and grey.

She lies in the bed she is meant to say goodbye in.

With quiet, wise eyes, she looks at her granddaughter and says, in a rough voice meant only for her ears:

“My little one, stay seven years old at heart,and dance barefoot with your fears across the asphalt.

So that you never, ever forget: you don’t have to do anything—you are perfect as you are.”

…and in this café, at the edge of the world,the alchemist has just finished his story.I feel a tear roll down my cheek and ask myself: What did I really want?

But ever since that café at the edge of the world,I can finally tell my own story.I know now who I am,I remember what I’m capable of.

And no—I won’t wait for miracles anymore.I will simply begin.

(Song by Maik Baum, from “Coaching in Concert”)

This song has crossed my path again and again lately.

It always touched me, but I never listened to it all the way through. A few days ago, I finally listened to it deeply—and tears streamed down my face. I immediately sent it to my partner, who was also deeply moved.

And yes, the question Who am I really, truly? And knowing which talents and abilities I carry within me, so I can use them—not for myself, but for others. This question has occupied me for a very long time.

Funny enough, I knew the answer as a child… and then life happened.

The conditioning.

The environment.

And we slowly move away from that deep inner knowing.

There’s always a whisper of it coming through, but it grows quiet again under all the noise that surrounds us.

In my coachings, or when I meet people who have no idea what to do with their lives, I often ask them: “What did you want to be as a child?”

Often they don’t remember, or they say, “I think I had no idea.”

But I believe we simply forget—and rediscover it later.

Every person is different, carrying a different level of awareness.

But the essence of every human being is the same: pure radiant light and unconditional love.

We just have to free it from the dust and dirt we’ve collected over the years—the conditioning, beliefs, and convictions we absorbed through family, society, culture… and of course the individual and collective traumas from our lives or our ancestral lines.

At the moment, I live and work in a Buddhist institute, and I get the chance to attend teachings. Just yesterday, I heard again that the path is about understanding our “mind” (interestingly, in Buddhism the heart and mind are considered the same). There’s no separation.

But how do we actually find out who we truly are?

How do we know, with clarity and certainty, what we’re here for—and what our path is?

Especially when obstacles appear again and again.

Facing our shadows, identifying our layers, the software that has been programmed over many years, and rewriting it—sounds good in theory. Even if we understand it intellectually, the real work is to experience it and apply it in practice.

And from my own experience, that is a long path that requires a lot of time.

For me, this has always been the guiding premise of my life.

Maybe that’s why I took a different path than what might have been expected of me.

Still, I believe—like the saying goes—that many roads lead to Rome. There are many ways.

Just recently, a friend in Sicily said to me: “Kathrin, we need those uncomfortable and difficult experiences. Otherwise, we wouldn’t grow.”

How would we feel at all if everything floated along on cloud nine?

So what to do?

From my own experience, everything begins with a first step—a decision:

Out of victimhood.

Into self-responsibility.

Into the conscious choice: I want to become the person I truly, truly am, and live my real essence.

For me, this is not spiritual fluff.

It’s what life is actually about: to experience, to grow, to evolve.

And I deeply believe that when we do what we love from the bottom of our hearts, we make this world a better place. We don’t need to become the next Nelson Mandela or Mother Teresa.

Change begins in small things—and, most of all, within ourselves.

Michael Jackson says it perfectly in “Man in the Mirror”:

“If you wanna make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and then make a change.”

And yes, even though I often wanted to save the world before looking at my own issues, life has reminded me in the past years that the work begins with me.

That I need to face my own shadows, my ancestral themes.

And through that, I can transform.

I’ve been impatient my whole life.

I always wanted to do everything fast, fast, fast.

Of course, it helped me achieve a lot in a very short time.

But in doing so, I often skipped the feeling part—the deep turning inward.

Pressure was my constant companion, and I always felt like I wasn’t doing enough.

Only this year did I learn that—even when we believe we still need to do this and that—we are always in the right place.

Life shows us the lessons we need to learn.

They will always come back.

Don’t worry, you won’t miss them.

Maybe they return in a different outfit, but they return.

For many years, I often feared I was too slow, not doing enough, or on the wrong path.

And even if things haven’t fully manifested in the outer world yet, I’ve experienced that my inner world is slowly realigning with what I dreamed of as a child.

And that I have always been on the right path.

It just takes time.

Today, another volunteer here—told me that Carl Jung gave himself several years to simply do nothing.

But I always believed I had to do something:one more workshop here, achieve more there…

And in all of that, I sometimes forgot how special the present moment is.

Ideas and insights come when we stop.

When we pause.

Interestingly, that happened for me on the Camino.

When I decided to stay in Santiago and shorten the remaining distance, the insights came.

The clarity.

The connection I had been seeking.

The feeling that everything is exactly as it should be.

That I simply needed more inner affirmation for my path.

I had searched for that affirmation outside for so long.

But honestly—it only comes from within.

I have to give that permission to myself.

Only then can I walk into the world with trust and awareness, offering what I came here to share.

I can switch on my light and shine—in my own colors.

I am, as I am—exactly right.

I don’t need constant doing, proving, justifying my worth.

No. I am allowed to do what I love from the deepest part of my heart—and that alone can make a difference. For myself, and for others.

Role models can help us find inspiration or ideas about who we are.

But at the end of the day, it is our task to clear away the dust, the layers covering our essence.

Which method works best is something each person must discover for themselves.

But my only recommendation is this:

When we press pause and listen to what appears, the answers come.

Have trust.

Searching frantically leads nowhere—at least that’s been my experience.

Only when we truly let go does the path reveal itself.

Another insight: spiritual and personal growth cannot be squeezed into a master plan.

My usual way of working—having a goal, checking my resources, and setting a deadline—may be great for projects.

But for personal growth? Sadly, it doesn’t work.

Maybe the beginning and the end are clear,

but the path in between takes many detours,

many setbacks,

a few steps forward,

then several steps back,

countless aha-moments,

and everything in between.

That is life.

That’s why it’s so important to be present,to embrace the moment—whether beautiful or painful—and to see it as part of our collection of life moments.

These are what shape our happiness in the end.

So I return to the question from Maik Baum’s song:

If happiness were a currency, what would make you rich?