A trip down memory lane

I am sorry for having skipped last week’s post, I usually try to write an article every week, but this week was different. The reason is that I have to live with my family for about two weeks. Initially I thought I could just come over for Christmas and then leave again but, due to reasons that are too complex to explain here, I have to stay longer. Those of you who have been reading my posts regularly probably know a bit about the situation between my family and me, although I didn’t tell all the details. So, because of the prospect of having to stay there, I couldn’t really concentrate on writing.

Did you ever go on a trip into your past? Was it voluntarily or were you thrown into it? What were your feelings connected to it?

Or are you able to live completely in the present and never look back? I’d like to say that I do, I usually try, and I did make peace with the fact that I will never have a good relationship with my family, my mother and my brother in particular. I just decided to live my own life. I think it is good and even necessary to let the past go. But there are moments that throw me back. Lately some people keep telling me they think I am strong, but especially in these moments I am not at all. Whenever I visit my family everything changes, mainly because nothing has really changed. I hope this doesn’t sound too confusing.

Did you ever look back and realized how good it is that past is over? This is what happens to me every time I visit my family. To be honest, I hate it. Nothing feels worse than stepping over the threshold of the entry door, every time I just want to turn around and run away. I hate sleeping in my old room, in my old bed, there are too many memories. I feel anything but free when being here. This is what describes it best, this feeling of being somehow trapped. It feels like there is something pressing my chest, not letting me breathe. I wish I could say that I can forget and forgive, but every time I’m here I realize that I can’t entirely. I couldn’t sleep for two weeks before going here and when I just thought of it I felt literally sick. I won’t stay any longer than necessary.

However, I am trying to see the positive side, which is that I don’t have to live here constantly anymore. Besides, I am really looking forward to a little Christmas party I am having later in the evening with a few old friends of mine. This is the other side of my journey into the past, I really missed those friends. We went to the same school but afterwards we all chose a different university, plus I moved away for my studies, so we don’t see each other very often now. Nevertheless, when we meet, it is like nothing ever changed and we’re best friends again. So, visiting my home town really is like a trip into the past, it seems like nothing ever changes here. I like to think that by moving away I escaped this state of not being able to move forward.

Anyway, next week’s post is going to be more like my usual ones again.

I hope you all get to spend Christmas with your loved ones. Merry Christmas, or, if you don’t celebrate Christmas, just have a great time.

What does happiness mean to you?

A few months ago, someone asked me: What does happiness mean to you?
I still don’t have a definite answer to that.
My first thought is always that it might be all the small things in life that make us happy. These things we happen to see at a usual day, like a genuine smile, or some beautiful flowers, or laughing with friends.

But isn’t this rather joy than happiness? In my opinion, it is. So, what is happiness?

Is it all these things together? Are we happy if we have a lot of joyful moments in our lives? Is happiness the ability to enjoy these moments?

Happiness seems to be a rather permanent state. When someone asks you “Are you happy?” it is usually meant “Are you satisfied with your life?” rather than “Do you feel joyful at the moment?” At least, that’s how it would be understood in German.
But can happiness really be permanent? Is that even possible? If we were in a state of permanent and infinite happiness, would we even know we were happy? To know what being happy means, we must also know the opposite.
Furthermore, humans seem to have infinite needs. Given this, can they ever be perfectly happy?

While writing this, I remember the differences between English and German. In German, there is more or the less the same translation for luck and happiness, that is “Glück”. Being happy would be translated with “glücklich sein”. But “Glück haben” means to be lucky, whereas happiness in “What does happiness mean to you?” is also translated with Glück.

If this is so closely related, does that mean happiness is something we have no influence on? Can’t we affect it at all? Does it only depend on how lucky we are?

Or is it rather a way of how we see things? Does it depend on one's ability to focus on the good things in life? Is it a combination of both?
Is there someone in this world who is perfectly happy?

However, to answer this, first there should be an idea of what happiness is. If it really is something like a permanent condition, happiness cannot be the same as joy, because joy is not permanent, provided that there are not just ups but also downs in life.

But then what is it that makes us happy? Is that different for everyone, is it totally subjective and relative? Or are there certain things in life that decide on everyone’s happiness? Is it love, friendship, family? Or success? What about money? What I always considered quite interesting is the fact that the pursuit of happiness is mentioned in the US Declaration of Independence. According to an American lecturer of a seminar I had last semester, this refers mainly to property. Clearly, for that you need to have money.

In my opinion, money can certainly make a lot of things easier and by that I mean that it helps if you have enough to be able to pay for your bills and all the necessary things in life without having to worry about it permanently. However, I would never equate money with happiness.
I really don't think you need to be rich in order to be happy. Anyway, if you had to be rich to be happy, the majority of people would never be happy and this is something I refuse to believe.

So, maybe what makes us happy is just everything that makes us smile. Maybe it is indeed all the simple things in life, or rather things that we too often consider as self-evident and given and that are actually not at all simple. Things like having true friends or a supportive family, or being healthy. Maybe it means to enjoy life and its good moments.
 

What does it mean to you? What makes you happy?

Parents - What do we owe them?

“After all I’ve done for you…”. A popular sentence and I am sure some of us have heard this sentence from our parents. But what have they really done for us?

The reason for us existing in this world is that at some point of their lives our parents decided to have a baby. In some cases, it might not have been a planned child, however the decision was made to bring up the child. They raised and funded us for years.
Does that mean we owe them our lives? Do we have a debt to pay for the rest of our lives?
The common opinion is that we are in their debt because they raised and loved us regardless of what we did. Having such parents you should definitely be thankful.
But what if they didn’t?


Certainly, we should be grateful and respect them to a certain extent. But do we really have to accept all of their statements? Do we have to obey and love them unconditionally?

Let me tell a story of a little girl, just a small insight.
She’s sitting in her room, thinking of how she can make her mommy proud of her, but she can’t imagine anything else than she has already tried.
Christmas is coming and she’s writing a wish list. All she writes is this: I wish that my mommy loves me. Then she hides the note in a drawer, never showing it to anyone.
A few hours later, her mother tells her she hates her more than anything else and she wishes she would never have been born. She tells her she is a slut and the worst child one could imagine and that she doesn't even deserve to be alive. She’s yelling at her for about an hour and strangling her for a couple of seconds, getting caught up in her contempt.  The reason for this is that the girl told her it was cold in her room whereas her mother thought it to be very warm and she hates too much warmth.
The girl tries to be strong, as she always does, she hides her tears until she is back in her room. There, her brother is already waiting for her, naked, as if he wanted to proof her being a slut. She screams, but nobody would ever listen.
 

I can see no love or respect here. There are so many cases of domestic violence and they shouldn't be tolerated. Unfortunately, parents do not always know what is best for their children, despite this so often mentioned argument.

Can you imagine how long it takes these children to recover any self-esteem?

So why do we still keep in touch with them? Why do we not break off all contact after having been grown up? 
In spite of all that happened, we still feel a certain liability, a duty or a guilt towards our parents.
Society tells us we should be grateful. After all they have done for you, you don't want to come home for Christmas? How can you be so selfish?
Above all, we can't erase family ties. It's still our family, after all.

When our parents betray our trust, abuse us, intentionally hurt us, do we still have to be grateful?  Parents should love their children, they should show them their love, but what if they don’t? What do we owe them?

When they wrong us, we might be willing to forgive them more easily than others, but injustice stays injustice.  

Basically, we should respect all human beings. But I don’t think we owe them our unconditional respect and gratefulness.

Respect should be mutual.
Of course, it is a good thing to respect our parents, but shouldn’t they pay us some respect too? Once we are adults, we make our own decisions and naturally sometimes (or often) we disagree with other people, which also include our parents. We have a right to form our own opinions and our parents should respect this. They should accept us as autonomous individuals with possibly different views.

Most of all, they should love and support their children when they are little, providing a basis for the respect and appreciation to be mutual.

If our family bond hurts us more than it does anything else, it is maybe time to loosen the ties and forget about the predetermined obligations.

After all, blood relationship doesn’t necessarily heal everything, it doesn’t convert injustice into fairness.

Quote of the week #6

Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.

Gloria Steinem

 

Today, I happened to listen to a song that always reminds me of hope for the future. It was played during our official graduation from school. We had to walk on a red carpet, me and my two best friends together and afterwards we were given our certificates. During that walk the song was played. I remember exactly how I felt that day. We were exceedingly happy to have passed our final exams with good grades. It was our last day as pupils and it felt like our whole future lay ahead of us. After 12 years of school, it was the threshold to a new life. We had so many dreams and hopes. In that moment, we felt as if we could reach anything, as if we could change the world. I know that it was totally exaggerated and unrealistic and it might even seem stupid, but this is what we felt, or it was what I felt. Of course, there is nothing much extraordinary about graduating from school, but for us it was the way to our future, it was like a magic moment. Whenever I listen to that song, it reminds me of that hopeful, exciting feeling and I begin to believe that there is still a lot I can accomplish. It makes me remember my dreams and hopes.

Is it of any good to have dreams? Is it starry-eyed, naïve? Would it be better to not dream at all, to be more realistic?

Is dreaming a way to define and achieve our goals or does it prevent us from living our life?

In my opinion, it is good to have dreams and, as in the quote, it is even a form of planning.
Even if they never come true, at least they give us hope for the future, they make the present a better place. They make us hope for a better future and in some cases they make us do something for this future. Most of the time I am down-to-earth, but in my heart I will never stop having some of those dreams. In my opinion, we should have dreams that are not too unrealistic and then we should try and make these dreams come true.

Do you still have dreams? Did some of your dreams come true when you grew older? Or did you give up your dreams?
Do we change when we grow older? Do we see things in a more realistic way, do our views change?

Well, I think I am still young and I don’t know whether my point of view will change when I am older. Anyway, I don’t feel like that all of the time. There are a lot of days I feel completely different, but I am grateful for those hopeful days.

Are we all basically selfish?

Imagine you were a boy in a big and quite house. Your parents are not at home, but your sister is. Great, you’ll wait for her to come out of her room, after all she must come out some time, so that you can abuse her, yes, sexually. Don’t worry, she won’t tell your parents, they wouldn’t believe her. You are mommy’s little boy, she’ll do anything for you. If your sister tries to tell your mother, you can still cry and tell her how bad your sister is, so that she is going to be punished. Anyway, you have been doing this for years, there really is no need to worry. Your sister is crying? So what?

You can’t imagine doing this? I hope so.


During the last few years I have realized something that I find terrible. There are people on this earth that are extremely selfish, people that don’t care at all about other people’s feelings.

The saddest part of it is that these people get away with what they do too often. Too often they are more successful in what they do than people that are honest and try to help others.

I have been thinking about this a lot and I really wonder whether one has to be selfish to get along in this world. Do you have to be unscrupulous, unfair and devilishly selfish?
Is this the only right way to be successful in whatever you do?

Are most people actually selfish at heart and is it good or even necessary to be so? Is it the easiest way?

However the easiest way doesn’t have to be a good way. But who determines what is good and what is bad? Isn’t moral just a necessary construct in our society?
And what are the consequences of such a behavior? Do these people really feel comfortable with themselves?

You could also say it in a more positive way. Is it a good thing to take care of yourself in the first place?
Should we be selfish, because we should love ourselves?
After all, someone has to look after you and maybe there is no one else. Isn’t it a good thing to pursue your dreams? It is, but what about the dreams of other people, what about their feelings, their hopes, their rights?

Is our society really so self-centered?

Are we all born selfish? From the biological point of view, we want to reproduce. Maybe it is in our genes, so that we are all basically selfish. But I think this explanation is too easy and I am not a biologist anyway.
Is helping others just a selfish way to feel good?
But then again, what about love and I mean true love? Shouldn't it be totally selfless?

What about generosity and altruism?
What about the human values we have? We should be able to find a balance between loving ourselves and caring for others.

I am asking myself all those questions, but in the end the answer doesn’t make a difference anyway. I know I wouldn’t feel comfortable.

So is it better to help others? For what good?

I don’t even know how to explain. I am not a very religious person, or rather I don’t believe in some specific church, so this is not the reason. I just feel we should help each other. Our world could be a much more wonderful place if everybody cared for others. Of course, there are a lot of people that do and I am really happy to know some.

I remember donating some money when I was about 15 years old. My brother just laughed at me, he couldn’t understand how one could be so stupid to give away their money. He even admitted that all he cared about was himself.
I have now a godson in Africa that I support with some money, although I don’t have much of it either and I work hard for it during semester break. I didn’t tell anybody, because I know people wouldn’t understand, especially not my family. Isn’t it terrible that one has to feel ashamed because of doing something good for others?
I know that for this child the money is much more worth than for me and I love that I can contribute to his chance of going to school.  Moreover, he is just a little child and it really isn’t his fault that his parents were not able to take care of him. So why not support him when I have the chance to?

Why not always help others when we have the chance to do so? And I don’t mean by donating money, but in our everyday life. You could brighten someone’s day or even more, and isn’t this totally worth it?

 

My point of view

I absolutely believe that we should all concentrate on the good things in life, that we should enjoy every little moment and be happy about all the little things that happen around us. I believe we should be grateful for what we have.  We should smile more often to other people (at least here in Germany people don’t do that too often) and we should try to share our happiness. Life is wonderful and valuable and it is too short to be unhappy and to have a negative point of view.  I am absolutely convinced by that.

Nonetheless, of course I know that life is often hard and unfair. Actually, you could say that I had what people call a difficult childhood. Maybe that is where the problems start. Because as I just said, I think that we should all concentrate on the good things in life and be happy about them. This is what I think. But what I feel is so different sometimes. You could say, there is a great difference between my thoughts and my feelings, between the things that I tell other people and the things that I actually feel. Often I concentrate too much on the negative things, I forget the positive ones and I am not grateful for all the good things that happen to me. And I am so often jealous of other people. I don’t really live the life I would like to live. But at the same time I am not able to change this, since I can’t change the present without endangering my future.

But of course I don't tell anyone. I keep smiling and try to convince myself of my own opinion.

Anyway, I won’t change my mind about concentrating on the small good things in life, because, after all, what else can you do to survive the difficult ones?