Icon: enlarge
2021 beckons - party!
Photo: shironosov / Getty Images / iStockphoto
As if that was necessary.
On the last few meters, 2020 really showed me the finger again, made it clear to me what was missing in this unfortunate year.
Shortly before New Year's Eve, the lumbago hit me.
A tiny movement was enough to transform me from a reasonably functioning 54-year-old into a chirping old woman.
I could no longer walk, sit, and just lie in pain.
Oh yes, I could still stand.
If I managed to get up
Anyone who has experience with acute low back pain - also known as groovy lumbago - knows what this pain feels like.
I was struck by lightning about seven times a day.
I felt like the man from the silent film sequences in "Benjamin Button", with the difference that I lived in a sound film and the impacts were not spread over a whole life, but 24 hours.
When the witch struck, I yelped.
My son found it so shocking that he moved permanently to the upper floor.
My daughter brought me things that were out of my reach, helped me into my pants and stockings, and tied my shoes.
Extremely humiliating, this lightning-fast aging.
My husband ran next to me as an emergency support when I tried to go for a walk because the internet said it was important to keep moving.
I padded 20 meters with short Parkinsonian steps, then felt sick and returned to the house to stand around the stove in the living room for a bit.
There I accidentally inhaled some ash and sneezed.
A brief explanation for the sports-loving, disciplined and therefore probably back pain-free readers: Sneezing is a kind of amplifier in lumbago, a lumbago booster that almost makes you faint.
I sought consolation.
"The Pope has sciatica," I read in the newspaper, and was almost reconciled to my fate.
Then I noticed that the pontiff is 30 years older than me, i.e. 84.
Hunger and cold are worse
I had just prepared for a new beginning.
I started out for more sport, more fresh air, less screen time in 2021. Instead, I was slowed down again.
If life had been on a spongy zero line for months, it now crashed into the minus range of maximum stagnation.
I had been pregnant with the damn virus for nine months - getting fat, moving less, puffing because I could barely breathe through the mask.
I tried to run three miles every day, but at some point the prospect of winding my way through a crowd of panting joggers and mask-free passers-by for an hour was so creepy that I just let it go.
Mentally, I survived the Corona period quite well because I had parents who firmly anchored their memories of the Second World War in our family memories.
Her worst-case scenario was to die at the front or in captivity, to suffocate in the bunker, never to see her little sister who had been lost on the run.
"Hunger and cold are the worst," my mother always told us.
My mantra 2020 was therefore: "The oven is roaring, we have enough to eat, the family is here, everything is okay."
When you make yourself smaller
Humility is a good thing.
You cut corners, at best you lower your expectations without giving away your dreams.
Most of the time, being humble isn't an intellectual choice.
The outside or the body or both teach us humility and acceptance.
Humility has to do with service.
In view of my lower back pain, esotericists would perhaps attest to my inherent inability to bow and hunch back.
Those who make a gesture of humility want to keep the peace and prevent aggression.
He makes himself smaller than he is.
Haven't we been doing just that since March 2020?
Our world has shrunk, our own four walls came closer and closer, we had to become smaller in order not to hit the ceiling.
You can contort yourself and get out of balance.
39 years of pain
"Illness is the place where you learn", wrote the French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal as early as the 17th century.
The man knew what he was talking about - he had symptoms of paralysis in his legs and is said not to have passed a day of his 39-year life without pain.
Pascal met his frailty with a radical piety which later thinkers outclassed him because he linked strict religious morality with mathematical rationality.
more on the subject
Age!
- The Midlife Column: "A Hideous Deadly Slap" by Juno Vai
Age!
- The Midlife Column: Suddenly Risk Group By Juno Vai
Then, in the 20th century, psychosomatics referred to his timeless aphorism, which illustrates that every illness also brings with it a learning process or an insight.
Sudden physical frailty can be perceived as humiliating, but it can also lead to beneficial humility.
I am struggling step by step out of my hunched position and can crack bad jokes about my howling again.
Today I walked a kilometer along the dirt road and was proud of myself.
I can lift a teapot again, hurray.
Stroke the cat in a grotesque but painless position.
How directly and unequivocally the body teaches us humility!
Almost like the pandemic, you could say.
Happiness plans
And that's why, after this embarrassing outlier, I'm finally getting to the point: There are only a few months left and many of us can expect to be vaccinated.
I am happy to continue wearing a mask, but the prospect of doing so as a pre-ill patient without the trepidation or fear of the intensive care unit is so great that even an old cynic like me is optimistic.
Yes, the government failed in the vaccine deal.
Yes, it is vaccinated too slowly.
Nevertheless: We are going into the new year with completely different omens.
Time for a little positive wishful thinking, right?
So what are the first three things you will be doing in the New Year once you are vaccinated?
My
pre-lumbago
answers were:
1. Take a dangerous long-distance journey to a strange country with strange interlocutors
2. Dance the night away with my daughter at a house club
3. Gather my dearest friends around a giant board and hug them until they start patting me on the shoulder with indulgent distance
The
post-lumbago
list was slightly modified:
1. Ride my bike to my favorite East Sea beach
2. Watching my daughter dance in a house club for two hours and I'm happy that I can tap my foot to do so
3. Gather my dearest friends around a giant board and hug them until they start patting me on the shoulder with indulgent distance
And what are your plans?
I look forward to your feedback in the forum!
Icon: The mirror