Netherlands – The Social Writer

Crisis Morality: A Short Essay

A kind of tiredness that cannot be resolved by sleep.

How long can humanity still hold on? The crisis has lasted for around one year now. Personally speaking, psychological resources are nearing a rapid dissolution. Fierce headaches, nightmares and fatigue are besieging my wellbeing. But the worst of all is the plain indifference that’s been holding me in a tight grip over the last month or so. My future self may not believe so, but this enormous, world-scale catastrophe, is gradually becoming the most boring, uninteresting and routine part of my life.

Conditional Hope

Hope does not console when it is conditional, when it instantly needs to concede a wish for change. Hungry for hope, society sways from press conference to press conference, frozen in an utmost boring and predictable regime: numbers rise, more measures, numbers drop, less measures. If virology isn’t your thing, these times are anything but intriguing. Every month or so, the expected measures are conveyed to ‘the nation’ in a patronizing manner through an equally tedious press conference by a dispiriting prime-minister who lacks vision and imagination.

As always, the nagging cliche ‘Only together we’ll get control over corona’, laughs at you from the pamphlets of the press conference room. But the ungratified hope has made this unrealistically militant phrase sound ironic by now; like an army general who still believes in victory, not knowing that he’d lost all his troops. Perhaps they need to come up with a new one and add some nuance. ‘Only together we’ll maybe, with luck, get control over corona’, might represent reality better.

After having seen 835483 of suchlike press conferences – I try to avoid it at all cost- they can merely, with difficulty, squeeze out a cynical grin on my face, while sighing lethargy. Newsreaders on the other hand, tell about the tiniest crisis developments. They do so in an unsuitable uplifting tone of voice; British variant, mutation of the British variant, mutation of the mutation of the British variant and so on. 3rd, 4th, or 50th wave. It cannot engage me any more.

The Lower Compartments

Yet it helps to apply some sort of philosophy to this brain-melting crisis. For there is only one reason that people swallow this way of living -which can hardly be called living. It’s simply because they can still bear with it. Our psychological bunkers are damaged, but haven’t been destroyed just yet. Meanwhile, signs of erosion are slowly presenting themselves. And erosion usually starts at the bottom. At the lowest layer of our society to be exact. As always in human history, it’s the poor who suffer first; One hundred years later, we’re still aboard the Titanic, categorized by the sizes of our wallets.

The noble idea is that society strives to protect the vulnerable ones. We must pauze our lives in favor of the most vulnerable. But ‘vulnerable’, here, is in the physical sense: It implies the elderly, the sick and the weak. But the economically vulnerable ones on the other hand, crammed in small flats with entire families, remain unnoticed. They are locked in the lower compartments of the 2021 Corona Titanic.

But when they suffocate and try to break out, they are arrested, put in jail, publicly condemned and shamed for their behaviour. A more interesting question; not if but when, will the ‘higher economic classes’ try to break free and flee the sinking ship. And will the retaliations be similarly severe? In another metaphor: when will the bunker’s higher parts start to erode? It’s only a matter of time.

Temporality Morality

In addition to the previous note, I’d like to emphasize the frailty of normative structures by which we measure good and evil. Recent riots as an answer to the curfew demand a closer examination of crisis morality. For morally condemning an act according to man made ethics will always be faulty to some extent. One cannot have moral judgements about past (or future) events, based on today’s morality, without harming the truth. Those who fully supported the corona measures last year, but have reconsidered their opinion today, are not hypocrite or contradictory, or ignorant to the threat.

Liquid Virtue

They have simply shifted their principles alongside dynamic crisis developments. Norms and values are superfluous and deserve a healthy dose of scepticism. The rioters who’ve set the Netherlands in fury and flame after the dubious implementation of a curfew are condemned today, but might be understood tomorrow.

We mustn’t forget that we rely on a changeable set of fleeting, fluid normative structures, invented by imperfect species (humans). Morality has no ties with any natural order. Virtues are not infinite or universal, not even international. This sort of easy shifting might seem both terrifying and liberating; We claim to disregard violence in itself, label young protesters as ‘criminals’, but make an exception for police violence. Football hooligans on the other hand, who ‘helped the police’, become heroes.

A Choice

Another example; an authoritarian regime might sound unthinkable in the Netherlands. Yet we live deliberately under such a regime right now.Every few weeks, the cabinet might decide regulations that affect our lives more and more severely, and of which the subsequent political debate is purely theatrical. For indeed, all regulations are implemented out of ‘inevitable (technocratic) necessity’. Discussion, the foundation of democracy, seems therefore obsolete. The political arena is surpassed. We live in an empty shell of what once could be called ‘democracy’. And we are (still) alright with it.

But it’s only the government’s promise of temporality which allows people to acquaint themselves with this more and more restricted life. Normative shifting goes almost unnoticed, perhaps in a way that the so-called decent people will be protesting themselves when time and psychological exhaustion will grant them the possibility. Will they, then, be condemned by their past selves? It is good to remember that all of it is a choice, be it political or social. The reaction to the virus remains an intentional human choice.

© Stefan Hoekstra & Marina Pribylskaia/The Social Writer, 2021. Unauthorized use/and or duplication of this material without express and written permission from the site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full name and clear credit is given to Stefan Hoekstra and The Social Writer with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Photo Credit: John Webster

Corona Diary #9

Stay safe, stay (physically) healthy. Written on 09-01-2021.

The above-mentioned cliche still loudly reverberates from last year. A particular kind of health is meant here, since societies have fixated most of their efforts on harboring physical health, but have undervalued mental wellbeing. As mental health is declining rapidly, we’re facing a very crude choice: mental health versus physical health.

We’ve entered a rather curious phase under the corona reign. Its last breath is at hand, if we must believe optimistic virologists. But in contrast to the cheerfulness about ongoing vaccinations, a swift end to the pandemic may be found downright unimaginable; at the doorstep of our long awaited liberation, corona bashes upon us at the peak of her power.

Record breaking infection rates have unlocked another series of relentless lockdowns and curfews, that ought to strip life from all its pleasure and distraction, hence ensuring minimal social contact.

Parks are possibly the best places to observe whether citizens indeed comply with these relentless measures or not. And an afternoon stroll through an Amsterdam park reveals to me more than a thousand statistics; they do not. Visitors clutter together in large flocks despite a bitter windchill and the threat of being infected. Moreover, inhabitants seem to embrace a rather bohemian lifestyle; they’re dancing in the eye of the corona storm, and take the risks for granted.

United in their hunger for sociability, crowds crack open bottles of beer or inhale the intoxicating fumes from a joint, stand in long queues towards Glühwein stalls and laugh their sorrows away with strangers. Spontaneous and carefree scenes, smiles on many faces, uplifted chatter. The behavior doesn’t arise from denial or stupidity; it is, especially in this phase, an inevitable necessity. After one year of being bombarded by inescapable corona news, hooking our attention into every tiny development, these can only be conscious, well weighed decisions. A heartbreaking dilemma between one’s own mental health or the physical health of another.

During the first wave, the task seemed feasible, the strong must protect the weak, simply by staying indoors and avoiding contact. Yet, growing disobedience proves indeed that after a year of neglected social needs, the mental capacity to fulfill our duty is evaporating. The source of psychological resilience, of human closeness, has been exhausted at last. Mental illness is lurking, and has become equally threatening as its physical counterpart.

Contrary to Camus’ description of The Plague, in which Oran is slowly dying from unknown and superior enmity, we are in a crisis that obviously feeds itself on social interaction. To retain good mental condition, togetherness is a key component, especially amidst fearful times. Mental vitality is an often underestimated, nonetheless unmissable precondition in order to win any physical battle. Tragically, it is this subtle individual nuance, untouched by statistics, that has perished at this crucial point. At the moment we need it the most.

Cover art: Pierre Auguste-Renoir, Le Bal du Moulin de la Galette, 1876. Public Domain. Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

© Stefan Hoekstra/The Social Writer, 2021. Unauthorized use/and or duplication of this material without express and written permission from the site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full name and clear credit is given to Stefan Hoekstra and The Social Writer with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Corona Diary #7

We went on vacation, but the virus didn’t. Written on 22-07-2020.

There is no reason to wrap up this diary just yet. Corona seems to be returning. Better said: it had never left us. A Dutch publicist stated sharply that ‘we went on vacation, but corona didn’t’. Numbers of infections are on the rise once again. Virologists are apprehensive for a second wave. But I’m afraid that we are still riding on the the first wave. Did we cheer to soon?

I have to reckon that I was impatient too and went on a brief train getaway to Czechia, where the virus seemed non-existent. Meanwhile, my fellow countrymen are sunbathing in France and Croatia. Some of us take it a step further and are endangering themselves and others, as they deliberately squeeze themselves into packed airplanes heading to Greece and Spain. This striking turnaround in mindset denudes our fleeting values. Touristic ventures by airplane were thought utterly irresponsible just one month ago, until ‘experts’ praised the plane’s ventilation systems and deemed air-travel entirely safe. And of course, we nod our heads agreeably. But for only a few weeks, Corona didn’t dominate the headlines, and here we are.

Humanities and technocracy don’t run smoothly together, that much is certain. In the heydays of Corona, the health ministry was releasing death-reports on a daily basis, which were then conveyed to the masses by news channels. As cases dropped, the frequency of these reports downshifted along with it, eventually dropping towards a meagre one time a week. From an epidemio-technocratic perspective, this might have seemed logical. Less cases, less attention. But from a social psychological angle, that means walking a very slippery slope. For it should be clear that the contemporary mind is directed by whatever appears (and disappears) on the powerful outlets of mass media (individually customized by algorithms).

Our Dutch vacation exodus also reveals how we put our blind trust in the government’s choices and advice. Which is erroneous, since even the best informed governments are running behind the facts. Technocratic decision-making is reactionary at most. It doesn’t envisage an ideal or anticipates on future events. It is perpetually in need for the outcomes of earlier research, and perpetually too late to act wisely in the moment. Understandably, the government doesn’t quite know how to anticipate, for the virus is still a big mystery. What isn’t a mystery though, is that certain sectors of economy are losing money.

Likewise, it proved tempting for politicians to act based on what they know, rather than on what they don’t. We know the economy is suffering. Yet we don’t know how dangerous and recurrent the coronavirus actually is. So what do we do? We let economy run free again, because we ‘know’ the sorrows of economy. Yielding to the pressure, the Dutch government had given in to compelling demands to reopen bars, cafes and even prostitution. Economically constrained countries such as India and Brazil never even had the luxury to disobey economy’s impatience. Nonetheless, even the financially backed-up Netherlands have ultimately succumbed to the hasty consumer market.

Unfortunately, also the Dutch reopening of economy was not a philosophically wise -free spirited, independent- decision, it was simply kneeling before the unrelenting power we have attributed to our consumer economy. Virus or not, we need to start running on the money treadmill once again. The future will tell where this will lead to. But the passivity of citizens and the loss of common sense, merged with the unwise hastiness of governments are worrisome predictors.

Header image: Sujeet Potla

© Stefan Hoekstra/The Social Writer, 2020. Unauthorized use/and or duplication of this material without express and written permission from the site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full name and clear credit is given to Stefan Hoekstra and The Social Writer with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Corona Diary #6

Whistleblower

Written On 18-06-2020, as part of my self-isolation diary.

Corona can be seen as the most successful whistleblower in recent history. A physical disease which denudes social diseases. In the wake of its rampage, it pointed out the staggering worldwide inequality and lack of access to medical care.

In the US, corona had already addressed its weak social safety, for it’s mostly the financially vulnerable who have died there. Corona has also pointed out how spoiled we (me too) have become, indulging ourselves into limitless air travel, polluting the world. But in this particular case, corona has touched upon one of the most counternatural, outdated, hypocrite and hopefully one day condemned industries: meat processing.

It is interesting to observe how corona sweeps across the European Union. Doing so, it cuts open all the incorporated flaws which haven’t been addressed but should have. Systematically, it removes the plaster from the normally hidden wounds of our union: the more dystopian aspects we don’t like to see, for they might destabilize the collective conscience and our way of depicting our beloved EU.

Corona’s most recent discovery is the hidden world of massive slaughterhouses in Germany and The Netherlands. One outbreak after another has revealed that the majority of employees have been infected by the coronavirus. Its employees are predominantly recruited in Eastern Europe, such as Poland, Bulgaria and Romania.

Dodgy job agencies aim to recruit people so poor that they don’t have a choice, other than to do the dirty jobs we don’t want to do in the west. They’re then housed in derelict dorms and are driven in buses towards the meat factory each morning. And after a tiresome day of tearing away pork intestines, these modern slaves are driven back to their barracks, which on themselves look like a pigsty.

On the news yesterday, was an enormous plant, located in Rheda, Germany. It has some 7000(!) employees, who have the honorable task to kill and process about 20.000 pigs on a good day. On its roof stands an large billboard depicting a cheerful cow and pig. I think pigs are not smiling once they know the horrors inside the building.

The gritty abattoir, which is owned by a billionaire, even has its own football club and a stadium! The irony would be even comical, but this matter is serious. As said, most of the employees are underpaid, overworked labour-migrants from the less wealthy regions of the EU, who now also have to suffer from corona. And I thought it was the European Union’s fundamental endeavour to increase equality. Not to exploit inequality, in favour of the already wealthy! European governments are struggling to excuse themselves for slavery in the past, while modern slavery is still alive and kicking.

So irony wants that here you have a factory full of pigs who weren’t supposed to be bred and killed in the first place, processed by workers who weren’t supposed to work there, to ‘produce’ meat of which 20% will be thrown away as a consequence of revenue calculations. (Throwing away packages of meat is ultimately cheaper than giving it discount tags.)

Perhaps they’d disagree at first, but I guess that ultimately, corona will be a true blessing for the modern slaves working there, and for the pigs, who are definitely not smiling like the banner wants to make us believe.

In the places now affected by outbreaks, it is often not the outbreak which is the most alarming. It’s not the corona infections itself that engage me into the actual news coverages.

No, it’s becoming aware of the ongoing activities which makes it poignant: the incomprehensible facts that leak to the outside world, as an unforeseen consequence of the corona discovery. For instance, that apparently, there is still a large fur industry in the Netherlands. That also, 5,6 Million pigs are slaughtered each year in our small country. 15,500 a day. We must be damn hungry.

Photo credit: KOBU Agency Portugal

Summer Journal: Dutch Siesta

I’ve started a summer journal. This is a note from 26-06-2020.

It’s 11:57 PM now. The temperature is about 23 degrees celsius. It has been the warmest day so far this year. And -yes I might sound ungrateful- hopefully the last. As said in earlier notes, this country is underprepared for this type of weather. It doesn’t have a siesta like in Spain. The economy isn’t halted even the slightest bit. Activities aren’t postponed. Life doesn’t slow down. Work intensity isn’t diminished.

Frankly, the approach in the Netherlands seems to be even counterintuitive: The stronger the heatwave, the more active Dutch people become. Today, streets were sprawling with sweaty folks, hurrying to and fro on their bike with a red face. To the beach. To work. To the terrace. Or to accomplish all these activities within the same day.

Despite global warming, Dutch people still gratify each warm day as if it were the last. Muggy and uncomfortable days like these are still perceived as seldom and need to be fully exploited. I think it’s a reflex which occurs whenever we see ’thirty degrees’ appearing on the forecast. It’s an old habit, originating from the harsh winters and disappointing summers we used to have in the past.

But those times are now disappearing and slowly being replaced by hot and wet seasons, like in Asia. As with any obsession, not much is left of its origins, but the reflex remained. Foreigners from warmer countries must witness this awkward summer obsession with spanish shame.

Air Conditioners

A related development is the multiplied purchase of air conditioners. From a growing amount of apartments, I see the unmistakable airco hoses sticking out of the windows. Some inhabitants have even fabricated a wooden construction, from where the hose can eject the warm air.

Herewith, I’d like to make a modest correlation with the end of mankind. It’s quite a simple circle really: People have made the world warmer by using too much energy, and now they need air conditioners to bear with the heat they created, using more energy, increasing warmth even more, for which more air conditioners are needed.

Why would this be the end of mankind? Well, because people buy the air conditioners for their own good, and don’t take into account the macro outcome. A large chunk of people cannot transcend their own life-span. Long term effects are therefore not considered, for it won’t be their responsibility anymore after they die; Most of the ecological problems of the world of today, have been created by those who didn’t care about the world of tomorrow.

It’s outright selfish, but unfortunately very natural human behaviour. The end of mankind is near, but if you happen to be an air conditioner salesman, you might be able to hold out a little longer than the rest of us. You might even be the last man standing.

Photo credit: Tim Roosjen

Corona Diary #5

How is the Netherlands handling the crisis?

Written over multiple days in June as part of my self-isolation diary.

03-06-2020 Bike Hell: My laziness tells me to write this note tomorrow, but my discipline tells me to write it today. It seems that this time, my discipline is the winner. The heat of yesterday has backed off a little. Also, corona drifts away quickly from people’s minds, including mine. But to be reminded of it, one has only to visit the city centre or public transport. In my hometown, bicycles have been forbidden, and loose standing bikes are removed and relocated to a faraway depot (you could call it: bike hell).

Today, during a stroll around the city, I’ve seen whole bunches of them being lifted onto a truck and taken away. New, old, rusty, expensive. All types were confiscated, even children’s bikes. And people who drove unconsciously into this sudden no-biking zone, got barked at by diligent stewards and were directed elsewhere. The rules that allow the municipality to do so, have been installed in order to prevent many people from merging too much, hence preventing corona spread.

Nonetheless, I don’t think they took into account that people have been riding their bikes for over a hundred year through these streets. So a paradigm change won’t occur within three days either. Anyway, the removal of bikes and sending away of drivers seems to be a cumbersome, ineffective activity which I don’t think will last very long.

In public transport, people are obliged to wear facial masks. It is a saddening sight, because the human countenance which makes people human, is hidden. Our daily dose of smiles from strangers has been reduced drastically since the introduction of masks, and will possibly lead to an unhealthy deficiency in unspoken outings of kindness. And since the smartphone revolution already, suchlike gentle acts of mutual recognition had been become meagre. A worrying development.

04-06-2020 Vacation: Corona seems miles away, and the Dutch are shifting their worries from a deadly virus, to forging holiday plans. France and Spain have announced to reopen their borders in Juli for tourists by car, so that the exhausted Dutch families can once again enjoy their well-deserved traffic jams on smoggy highways and annual family camping dramas.

14-06-2020 Washing hands: Corona measures are increasing but my understanding of them (or willingness to do so), is decreasing. As part of our ‘intelligent lockdown’ strategy, a large survey amongst 64.000 fellow dutchies was conducted to map their compliance with corona rules. It unveiled that keeping distance is getting harder, but washing hands is still feasible. There is a serious error (perhaps on purpose?) in this research: washing hands is not a corona measure. It is the very basis of personal hygiene. But the respondents still confirmed obediently that this is something corona-related.

So I confirm herewith the internationally claimed assertion that Dutch people have the dirtiest hands. It is culture specific, and I as a dutchman, can acknowledge this: the gross of Dutch people doesn’t wash hands after having used the restroom. The country’s overall cleanliness and absence of deadly diseases might give an explanation. It’s amazing. Here, it is so clean that we even dare to shake the unwashed hands which just wiped an ass. It is quirky, but when abroad, I have always washed my hands obsessively. But when back in my home-country I started skipping it once again. Finally I unlearned it, after my girlfriend Marina shared with me her disgust about this stubborn, culturally inclined habit. I came to even like it, for washing hands is maintaining your body and therefore a small act of self-respect.

14-06-2020 Priorities: A school example of hypocrisy. Is family less important than vacation? Dutch travel organizations cannot wait to send their customers to the all-inclusive hotels they’d initially booked. Since today, vacations within europe are possible again, after Spain and Italy (which we first didn’t want to help financially) reopened borders for tourism. Now, after we had to fear a severe lung-disease for so long, the second worry is whether we can go on holiday or not, whether we can drink unlimited cocktails at the pool while being served by underpaid labourers, whether we can stuff ourselves again with fast-food, alongside a beachfront crammed with concrete hotels.

The government understands this impatience of travel organizations and holiday-goers very well, and promises full safety when they travel in aircraft to their destination. The crammed, profit oriented, polluting flying barrels which we call airplanes are not only more liable to an outbreak amongst passengers, they are also the worldwide delivery service for corona. For a great deal, air travel was responsible for the fast corona spread, a couple of months ago, and now, suddenly, they will be fully functioning again. And not for loved ones or family to finally reunite. No, for vacation.

Even more poignant is that I need to show an impossible amount of proof of relationship to be able to get my loved one here. Me and Marina are excruciatingly separated because we don’t have the paperwork, while Dutch vacationers will be criss crossing throughout europe with all the risks involved, for this one vital activity: leisure. Or should I say, for economy?

I hope that one day, our government will have understanding for people like us, too. We don’t want leisure, we only want each others proximity, for I consider us family. Is family less important than vacation? According to our government, yes. Is paperwork more important than the risk of an outbreak? According to the government, yes.

Photo Credit: Kayla on Unsplash

Corona Diary #3

Written on 14-05-2020 as part of my self isolation journal.

Get busy living, or get busy dying.

I never thought this famous quote from The Shawshank Redemption would become so relevant to society. But it did.

Reminders of the pandemic are becoming rather scarce throughout the streets. The city is bustling, albeit under an odd, somewhat made atmosphere. It is the expected point where measures and the corona regulations are becoming blurry. It is hard to follow sometimes. Is it still advised to stay home most of the time? Can I go out with three family members but not with three friends?

From a social psychological angle, the future seems quite worrisome in this sense, especially when corona has ultimately disappeared from people’s minds sooner than the threat of corona itself. In other words, the understanding for strict regulations will probably fade before the actual virus does.

Then, after a few months, there will be less compliance than is required to keep the virus away. And when the government will make an attempt on getting economy fully running again, enforcing stringent corona precautions might cause misunderstanding and frustration, and eventually violence, for instance in public transport. Not to speak of a potential, striking return of the coronavirus.

The attention-span of many is not extensive enough, I’m afraid, to keep honoring the rules as they did until recently. In Wisconsin for example, judges have already rescinded corona regulations as protests and public unrest were growing. And partly, I understand this impatience: people have the natural desire to live. This, I think, is not simply a matter collectivity versus individuality, it is a perilous area of tension and most of all a conflicting question: What’s the use of saving other lives, if therefore we need to give up living ourselves?

Underneath it lies a more existential question; what do we consider life, and what do we consider death? I suppose people have an importunate desire to prevent leading a life devoid of living, for that would mean they’d be dead before they are dead. I think this poignant contradiction will be the biggest challenge in the times to come.

Photo credit: Anastasiia Chepinska

Lidia’s Wisdom

Babushka Lidia is a woman of extraordinary strength. At the imposing age of eighty-two, she lives a physically intense life in a wooden cottage, some twenty kilometers away from the closest city. Apart from the occasional resupply by family, she is largely self sufficient. Whenever I’m residing temporarily in Russia, a visit to this admirable woman guarantees to become a highlight. This piece of writing is a devotion to her and many other brave elderly.

With three delicate kisses on the cheeks and a tight yet gentle hug, Babushka Lidia ensured me a pleasant farewell. It meant saying an indefinite goodbye to a very remarkable person. After reassuring her of our return, I tumbled down the small stairs and found myself in the characteristic living room. Its low ceiling (confirmed by a fierce headache) and squeaking floor supplied me with a last warm, cozy embrace.

As we walked across the yard towards the adjoining dirt road, Lidia peeked out of the window once more, with a soothing smile. A glance of reconciliation. Upon embarking the car, we waved back and set off. Within moments, Lidia was out of view. And so was her tiny, two floor cottage. Or, as it is called in Russia; her Datcha. The weakly illuminated window of it, reduced swiftly into a modest dot in the darkness.

Just a stroll away from this fairy tale place, lies a dense forest full of tall pine trees. Pointy treetops outline the horizon. This captivating panorama reaches out far into the distance. The house is encircled by a stretch of cultivated land, wherein Lidia grows potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, paprika, cucumbers, zucchini and so on. Often, her skillful and persistent way of farming leads to a surplus of food. She then calls out for family to pick up some of her harvest. For us back in the city, her insurmountable production levels generally lead to another week of zucchini and potatoes for dinner.

Every summer, Lidia can be found here, shovelling land and practicing other kinds of complicated agricultural labour (of which I don’t possess the slightest knowledge). All the desperate attempts of family to re-establish her into her city apartment were unsuccessful. Only in the relentless Russian winter, when snow and ice begin to obstruct the farming, she relocates reluctantly to the city, just to return the very next spring.

Lidia was a child during WWII. And in her turbulent youth, she fell into the hands of the Germans and was banished to a labour camp. And so were her sisters and parents. She had told us that at times, there were not much more than a few crumbs of bread to eat. This bitter epoch of scarcity lasted until far after wartime. Oftentimes, she was expected to overcome about twenty kilometers on foot towards the nearest settlement, in order to obtain a negligible amount of groceries. If any groceries at all.

On the worst of days, she returned home empty handed. Besides, the journey was not without hazards, as it crossed dense forests covered in snow, inhabited by bears and wolves. And if that is not enough, the temperatures during those risky ventures dropped regularly to far below zero. Additionally it’s worth mentioning that her shoes, if you could call them so, were made of plain cardboard.

In the subsequent decades of her life, she worked, as many women did during soviet times, in an enormous plant. As chief of the factory kitchen, she had thousands of hungry labourer’s mouths to feed. Perhaps it’s a plausible explanation for her superb farming productivity nowadays. Over ten years ago, she lost her beloved husband. They had been married for over fifty years. Lidia has been grieving ever since.

To this day, she misses him undiminished. In speech and ritually, she pays homage to him. More recently, Lidia had suffered from a variety of cardiovascular problems, for which she underwent multiple surgeries. And the list of alike intriguing life events continues endlessly. Nevertheless, it couldn’t withhold her from residing in the cottage once again, irrigating plants and shovelling land with a fulfilled smile on her face.

When trying to understand her life’s narrative, the significance of it becomes evident. She overcame miseries, nearly incomprehensible for youngsters like me. During a pleasantly melancholic conversation with her, it struck me that, as I looked into her dark green eyes, I was looking into a bittersweet past. Lidia had felt and seen anything that induces anyone with loads of anxiety.

During the lengthy talk with her, I promptly realized something peculiar. The curious eyes I was making contact with, stood once face to face with German camp wardens. Next to this, intense surgeries, grieving over the dead, thirty years of working in a factory, starvation and numerous other sorts of dismay bashed upon her life. To the same extent however, she had felt affection and tenderness. Either from a loving family, children or a good husband. Henceforth, her family’s astonishing solicitude still keeps her warm in times of distress, like a thick blanket during the harshest Russian winters.

Considering this, I reckon that being in Lidia’s proximity offered me some sort of immunity against any problem, even though I’m nearly twice as tall and still have my teeth. Her carefree expression made me feel safe from harm. Her impregnable wisdom and persistence instilled me with loads of consolation. Without a doubt, I felt protected by this eighty-two-year-old woman.

It felt as if her eventful past reduces the anxiety about the uncertainties of my future. There will be difficulties, tragedies, grief and the occasional headache. But to a similar extent, moments of beauty, growth and love will present themselves. What matters is that you perceive life’s inevitable stages with gratitude. And later on, like Lidia, with a healthy dose of melancholy. Preferably when harvesting potatoes from the meadows, accompanied by an unconcerned but wise smile on your face.

Lidia’s contentment contradicts profoundly with the busy lives some contemporary people chase. Millennials, for example, need to do skydiving, visit the Bahamas, do an Arctic expedition, climb the career ladder before there’s no more time. Or visit all the countries in the world, and simultaneously maintain a glorious love life. All before the interlude of life’s final phase. It’s likely that these ambitions are born out of pure fear for mortality, rather than unfolding from a genuine, congruent desire to accomplish them.

Some want to complete this list of accomplishments before it’s all over. ‘You only live once’ is a popular philosophy, which is, of course, undeniably true. You do live only once. Nonetheless it contains a counterproductive element. Its definition emphasizes unwittingly the things we haven’t done or experienced in our brief existence, rather than cherishing and gratifying life’s tests we’ve gone through already.

In an ironical way, it’s chiefly the elderly people like Lidia, who appear the most serene with the idea of our imminent mortality. For they are already soberly familiar with life’s misfortune and its sorrows. Lidia and many other elderly prove that it’s important to grow old solving life’s phases in an accepting way. Not full of envy or regret about the things we haven’t done or achieved, but content with the suffering and grateful for any granted moments of sublimity.

There is another, more mind-broadening aspect to be learned from Lidia’s story. It’s quite often discussed theoretically by existentialists such as Viktor Frankl and Irvin Yalom. And more fundamentally by philosophers like Søren Kierkegaard, whose ideas are now anything but outdated. In the finely inverted words of Kierkegaard:

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards

These thinkers underline the correlation between depression and the fear of getting older. This is undoubtedly connected to nowadays obsessive emphasis on youthfulness in Western countries. But also to the aforementioned ‘you only live once’ construction, which actually implies ‘you’re only young once’. Our juvenile time is seen as the worthiest part of life, wherein people are at their best, only to thereafter descend into a long, boring epoch of old age. This alleged long stretch of regression, leaves no room for further development.

In spite of this, talking to Lidia made me envy her calmness and wisdom. Though ambiguously, it denuded my abundance of fear for the unpredictable future too. She has the advantage of being familiar with life’s unavoidable difficulties, while I as a young adult, still need to find ways to transcend them. Harsh lessons are awaiting me. But Lidia’s glance from the small window and her bittersweet stories all instilled me with resilience towards the unforeseeable future.

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