I first encountered the statement Cometh the hour, cometh the man in Norman Lebrecht’s book Genius & Anxiety.

The wisdom and style of the saying led me to think about where it came from. From Jewish sources? From world literature? After some investigation I discovered that it is old English proverb. It means that circumstance can/will lift a person up or bring him down.

Folk sayings have the power of life experience. Their great beauty lies in their conciseness, which is sometimes astonishing.

In complex circumstances, the sentence “cometh the hour, cometh the man” has the power to bring the calm that emerges from an inner hope that reality will take the desired turn. Indeed, in the history of nations, difficult times have brought humanity to the surface. Conversely, such times have also brought about surprising but healthy and blessed change. Try to remember: the appearance of Churchill, Herzl and Ben-Gurion…. From the ancient times and to the present day, no destructive situation in the lives of nations has survived; rather, they are replaced – sometimes sooner and sometimes, unfortunately, later – by something new and beneficial.

The life experience of ordinary people is like a spotlight. It is worth listening to its wisdom because it makes distinctions along a continuum of time. In my opinion, the key point is that this isn’t the philosophy of learned people.