D he year is already a month old – and unfortunately many lives poorer. Lots of people are dying around me these days. Relatives, acquaintances, friends of friends and relatives of other relatives. Although some of them grew very old, it still remains sad. Others died shockingly young, which is shocking and depressing.
As I ponder this and give space to sadness – perhaps also to pathos – I notice that the gray frost in front of the door is a fitting symbol for this. The cold chills you to the core. Here in Berlin, a stubborn ice sheet has been keeping us in a headlock for weeks. Yes, style flowers also have their place. In any case, the ice cream makes me sweat all the time. To be more precise: the constant change in running modes between a penguin and a heavily laden man, who leans slightly forward over the ice – yes, what actually – for a more stable gait, stilting, padding and crawling?
Of course, given the patriarchy that still exists, the image of the heavily burdened man is interchangeable: with an even heavier burdened woman or a non-binary person with a heavy burden on their shoulders. And the ice becomes an involuntary but effective exercise in your own steadfastness.
Running on the ice is dangerous and idle because you can hardly move here and there, but it trains your spine like nothing else. In the best case, real self-empowerment grows from this. Anyone who stays on it might make it on even smoother ground: on the political permafrost of our time.
Almost everything that is keeping the world in suspense right now is male. Old men, loud men, men with power, with bombs
Because almost everything that is keeping the world in suspense is male. Old men, loud men, men with power, with bombs, with tweets, with religious madness or with the firm will to make everything complex very simple again. The names change, their patterns remain. They sit at the gear levers, in talk shows and parliaments, in fake news editorial offices and behind the steering wheels of cars that are too big. Often in your private life or at work, where you would rather not imagine how slippery the floor can become. Of course – not everything male is evil, but still too much evil is male.
Which brings me back to death. And the question that arises in such times: Why do the good guys always have to leave so early? Of course that’s not true, but it feels like it. Gerhart Baum was 92. Hans-Christian Ströbele at least 83. Rita Süssmuth died shortly before her 89th birthday. But Marco Bülowthe brave fighter against profit lobbying, left just a few days ago at the age of just 54. Renee Good from Minneapolis At the beginning of January at 37. And the completely innocent ones left much earlier. Aylan Kurdi, Hind Rajab or Anne Frank. Children whose names should never have been learned. The question should be different: Why do the bad guys get so old?
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Perhaps it is precisely this imposition that forces us to take a closer look. Death not just as an end, but as a source of strength, as a bitter elixir of life: why all the stress when it can happen at any time? The sickle man should make you angry, both on and off the ice. Not just because of the lack of clearing of the sidewalks, but because a broken neck is possible at any time.
In the face of Memento mori The hatred, the small egos of the seemingly big men, the stupid and idiots in their personal environment seem silly and unbearable. In the end they too will just scrape off. So what do we have to lose – other than life?