Yesterday I watched “Mona Lisa Smile” yet again. And this reminded me that I hadn’t posted these thoughts which I wrote when I was in Germany. The movie is about choices and societal pressures.

26^th October 2007

Not sure what to write – these few days the thoughts have been stuck in my brain.

I have been in Germany for a week and I am bored. You may say it’s the country-side with nothing much to do. Yes, it is that but it’s not all. And here is where I don’t know how to put it without sounding off the wall.

When you live in a place where you are prepared for nothing to go smoothly one would assume that coming to a place where everything does work smoothly one would have a sense of relief. But not for me. For some odd reason I get a clinical feeling here. I am just here to consume, to shop. To grab a few things which are unavailable over there.

Above and beyond that I am not inspired – I don’t even hear much international news here. Things spin around local “problems” – should they pay unemployment money to the above 50ies for six months longer or not? Where I live there are 55 year old men looking like 75 begging in the streets after life-long fighting only to be called a “gun-slinger” by those in power now. Unemployment money, pension? They are happy if they can afford a bit of fire wood in the coming winter.

Maybe it is such stark contrasts which appal me or a mother who thinks I should finally “put my life on a solid footing”. What is “a solid footing” to begin with, I can’t help but wonder. Is it accepting a relationship which has gone from love to friendship, is it that manager position at Mercedes which my cousin holds? Is it a child by all means – natural or in vitro? Who defines it? Society? As far as I am concerned it shouldn’t be, even though still too many people conform with what we are taught to be ideals, what we are taught to make us happy, without seeing this conformity as the root cause to their open or latent dissatisfactions. In my perception of life happiness and satisfaction are the criteria for “footing” – solid or not – and they have certainly been ill-defined by “societies” at large. Who is “society” to judge? Individuals’ happiness depends on very individual things. Some are content with a filled bank account, others like Ahmad and I need emotional satisfaction and a sense of achievement. We need ideals to realise and fulfil. Yes we like money, too, we like beautiful things indeed but not as a reason to settle but as a comfortable companion.

The above examples may indeed mean true happiness to some and my life choices, too, don’t and won’t give me eternal bliss – this is the nature of this world. All I am saying is that one should not make these choices based on society pressures but based on ones own judgement.

What’s my point? Here is where I falter – there is no point except for the fact that it is easy to get stuck within a narrow framework of worries which to most “other” people are none – some people here judge life by their standards and perceive a level of negativity and even suffering which must seem ludicrous to many other people in the world – but then again who can blame them? They are unable – as in not being in the position to – to see what is relevant elsewhere and that other people are human and that their lives are just as important as theirs and that those peoples’ concerns are just as valid – it is just that they have different concerns.

“The Muslims”, “the this, the that” – far too many of us create drawers to cope with life, to evade the necessity of dissecting different situations, different everything. It is easy to judge along established lines.

And perhaps it is this which is my point: the overwhelming diversity of the different countries where I have lived throws away all drawers. That is what makes life so immensely exciting “there” and appear so bland here. I must now unavoidably see all diversity and differences; as a result “drawers” drive me insane because they equal ignorance and are the root to much suffering.