The myth of Dystopia

Do you remember the meme that made the round a few years ago and was about how our grandparents apparently described their way to school?
Barefoot through a blizzard, fighting off wild animals and all of that on their own?
Or, have you ever come across this weird saying about difficult times making great people … and, how was it again? Then these great people make too easy times for their children and thus produce not so great people giving us a difficult time again and in doing so kind a producing great people … again?

I think it‘s kind of obvious that we have a Dystopia problem, don‘t you think?

The thought of awful times bringing out the best in people is more and more upsetting me.
And I don‘t mean to be disrespectful to all the brave and wonderful people and their deeds that saved someone, or made a strong symbol to go down in history, I really don‘t.
I just think that these people would have been brave, and wonderful, and just as great as they were without disaster happening all around them and testing them like this, and I wish it would be easier to recognize this.

But light kind of needs the dark to really be seen. Contrasts point certain things out more clearly. But actually, a high contrast also swallows some details.

When life forces us to see things in extremes as this, it does not bring out the best in us. It highlights some extreme cases in a heartbreaking way, and forces most of us into a state of things, and heart and mind, which we never wanted to be in.

The war right now turns a whole nation into soldiers, into fighters. Farmers abduct tanks (and yes, I enjoy watching them doing so), and it does not matter anymore if someone was a friend, a parent, a teacher, an artist or whatever – suddenly everyone fights and so many die and will die without ever returning to themselves.

The pandemic made it irrelevant who ever was a friend, or a child, or a grandchild, or whatever. It made us sit alone at home while others were dying and swallowed possible goodbyes, and it was the right thing and we applauded us for this tragedy.

A few years ago, I was in love with someone how had cancer, so necessarily we lived as passionate as we could, because we didn‘t really know how much time was left. And it was exhausting! It was not passionate, it was not fulfilling – it was just burning us out and of course we broke up, although we could have had all the time in the world, since he survived and is still around.

And when the news about the war in Ukraine possibly spreading and turning into nuclear world war 3 became too much, I was once again trying to live out this kind of passion, and of course it did not work. It ended up to be the same kind of burning out. I was going too far and I was provoking and testing people, searching for a shine of light in this darkness.

Exhausting as hell also are my attempts to collect enough pasta and rice and canned goods for humanitarian packages I planned on sending to Ukraine, because with this war freaking people out and the pandemic escalating once more, those are fucking difficult to get.

And back to those grandparents: Mine were children in world war 2 in different places in Europe.
They have been through terrible things, I am not questioning that in any way. But I also see my parents as emotionally stunted, if not neglected. Because, what are those little dramas of yours that you’d need your parents for if you know that they have been through this kind of hell? And what kind of conversation can you ever have with someone not being able to have a single argument with a loved one, because once all their loved once died in an air strike in 1942?

I have a co-teacher at work who also works as a social worker and therapist, and once she starts venting, she uses a mentally resilient war refugee to complain about a client’s depression, and I as a mentally ill person that has not yet been bombed (although still almost got killed), feel very uncomfortable while listening and once again don’t think any comparison is appropriate.

To sum it all up, I don‘t think that difficult times bring out the best in us.
They make us cling onto the few good things that still contrast the horror, and swallow the rest of us.

I can‘t wait to see a day again that does not seem to crush the earth beneath its weight, and I honestly have no idea when or how such a day is ever supposed to come again.