REPORT 2022
For the first time in all the years I've been writing these yearly reports, I want to give more space to my private life and let it come first in the text. Maybe a signal of a changed work-life balance.
Having smoked a pipe for more than 60 years, I have not touched my pipes since July 2022, even though they are teasingly laying here on the table in front of me. There is a special explanation for this cultural decay.
After a lovely mountain trip in Norway at the beginning of July with my wife Mai and the 10 grandchildren, I was struck by apoplexy in the brain on 10 July, a few days after I had returned to Copenhagen. Thanks to great luck and reasonable training condition, the damage was rather small. A transient disturbance of the fine motor skills of the right hand and temporary tendency to foot drop walking with the right foot. It is almost over now half a year later. But something might be leaving a more permanent mark - one could hope. I have trained my right hand by e.g. playing scales on the piano and has become better at it than ever before. And more important I have gained a new perspective on health, illness, healing and on a good life in general. Both in the close personal and the broader societal perspective. Not so often I think about experiences and events that may be “the last time”, and about all the things I have to achieve before it's too late. Followed by reflections on whether it really is so important in a wider context.
Far more serious is the fundamental question whether we (that is, the Danish welfare society) are able to maintain the well-functioning, publicly funded healthcare system, which I have encountered in recent years as an increasingly frequent and very satisfied user. The same applies – to broaden the perspective – to the other parts of the distressed welfare sectors. And above all, climate change is probably the most serious threat to our entire civilization and existence.
The question is whether our political-administrative system, created and developed in a completely different time for a different society, is able to handle the very large and complex challenges. My barely concealed pessimism is characterized by the continued work with the "Bermuda triangle" between politics, administration and media, which I have participated in for some years within the framework of the 'FORUM for public governance and management' at the Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen (see report from 2021).
But I am really, as is often the case with us - the pessimists - grateful that there are so many people in the family and among friends with a much more optimistic view of life and the opportunities to do something about the many challenges.