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Photo: Yiu Yu Hoi/Getty Images
Even the Elbe has crawled away.
Has disappeared into the ashy mist and become one with the sky.
Walkers in dark blue quilted coats stand at the harbor and look in vain for the horizon.
They breathe rain, look sallow and sullen.
Just like me.
In the second pandemic winter, people have become strangely equal in their suffering.
As if they had been passed through a giant homogenizing machine.
Everyone is fed up with the C word, revised forecasts and conflicting assessments of the situation.
Worried about their children, the future, their health, their job.
The fears are similar - only with collective consolation it somehow looks meager.
Instead, group psychoses are piling up, Putin is threatening the world with war, and a professional lunatic like Trump is launching a new battle.
Who would want to complain about personal problems like mid-life or sense crises?
That would be downright obscene, wouldn't it?
The stupid thing is that personal needs don't go away just because the world seems to be ending.
And while under normal circumstances it is quite possible to address specific problems and offer consolation, in the corona crisis we are suddenly at a loss because everyone is complaining about the same thing - and nobody can eliminate the cause.
"Oh, no problem, darling!"
Sometimes it seems to me that we in Germany have a problem with consoling.
Often when I'm in the UK, simply asking for directions is enough to instill a warm wave of compassion.
There's always a friendly elderly lady somewhere, dressed slightly casually in tweed and fleece wool, who gently puts a hand on my upper arm and says, 'Oh, no problem, darling, just straight ahead and second right. You can't miss it, dear.” She smiles understandingly, with mischievous eyes. The subtext is: Nothing can happen to you, you stay the course, no matter what. There are few moments when I feel better comforted than in such casual encounters.
In this country, we tend to give pragmatic, concrete advice in an emergency, concrete instructions for action that are intended to free the other person from their predicament.
That's also kind of touching.
But sometimes it seems a little mechanical and can be overkill when someone just wants to be hugged without a word in the face of the evils in the world.
I recently looked around the internet for blogs and offers for midlifers.
Learned that there is a "World Menopause Day," that illness shakes our confidence, and that women should stop apologizing.
I found a »totally no makeup-just-out-of-bed-challenge« with selfies in which women show ironed faces, which were certainly not only digitally edited, to be particularly bogus.
Such nonsense.
The German language pages seemed a bit contrite, tormented and problem-focused overall, so I looked at the British and Americans.
In some Facebook groups, I had to promise not to talk about politics or Corona before I joined them, which annoyed me at first.
As if we would automatically become apolitical after 40!
Later I understood why such rules make sense.
Just lay down and die?
One of these groups was pleasantly conspicuous by their conversational tone.
Empowerment, mutual reinforcement and inspiration were in the foreground.
There were plenty of women here who wanted nothing more than to pretend to be perfect.
"I got breast cancer on my 52nd birthday," wrote a woman from Australia.
Both breasts and uterus were removed.
»After that I had to be treated for a year and do rehab.
During that year my best friend died of breast cancer.«
I swallowed.
It was the classic oh god I'm never gonna whine again moment.
Comparison remains the ruling force in social media.
When we read about someone who is significantly worse off than we are, we automatically feel better.
That's a nasty law of distinction - self-exaltation through downward comparison.
And one reason why I hardly ever use Instagram, Twitter or similar channels privately.
Joanne, however, was also a motivating role model: instead of falling into depression, she says she bought a backpack and traveled around the world alone. "I was scared? Hell yeah!' she wrote. But the fear of dying to regret not having done something was greater. Many people have praised their strength in the fight against cancer, she tells me in the chat. 'But what would have been the alternative? Should I have laid down and died?” It's like this: “You don't know how strong you are unless being strong is your only option.” Who would disagree?
Joanne, whose real name is something else, did something she always dreamed of but never did through fear or laziness.
With her post and the seductive photos of a "great journey" that can definitely be understood as a metaphor, she has opened a window for her readers.
The feedback was huge, as was Brit Siobhan Daniels, a BBC journalist who quit her job after a severe mid-life crisis and has since lived in a camper van and toured the UK.
I get in touch with her.
»Invisible and without a voice«
During our Zoom call, Daniels smiles as she sits in her vehicle with the verdant East Sussex countryside in the background.
The 62-year-old radiates so much joie de vivre that she is encouraging just by being like that.
The incarnation of empowerment, so to speak.
That was not always so. "Shortly before I turned 50, my life got out of hand," says the journalist. A brother died of lung cancer, as did her sister, and shortly before the start of her adventure, her mother too. Her daughter moved away to study. She herself had to have her uterus removed. On the job, she was marginalized and excluded from career opportunities because of her advanced age.
"I felt invisible and without a voice," she says. “The way younger colleagues talked about older people was so derogatory. Everything around me was anti-age – only I was pro-age.« After all, all people would age from the day they were born. »So why don't we change the narrative? We should use our purchasing power and refrain from all products that negate or combat aging. Consciousness has to change. No older person has to conform to any expectations and clichés.«
She lost herself along the way.
"I became depressed, overwhelmed by everything," says Daniels.
»My head was packed like cotton.
I had panic attacks, memory problems.
At some point I sat crying on the toilet at work and understood that I was broken and could no longer fool myself or the others.«
Adventure is possible at any age
She herself and everyone around her would only work to the point of exhaustion, neglecting friends and family and losing the fun in spontaneous activities.
"It was all about what you are and what you have - I didn't want that anymore." So she resigned, bought a mobile home, gave away what she no longer needed.
Then she started planning the trip of a lifetime.
"When I finally drove off and saw the blue sky over Dover, I burst into tears of happiness and contentment."
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The road to get there was long.
»It took me five years to overcome my fears and get an idea of what is possible.
And then when I turned the key in the ignition, I still didn't know where to go.” Daniels now knows what her plan is: not to have one.
That doesn't apply to everyone, of course.
“An adventure is different for everyone.
But it is possible at any age.
It keeps you feeling alive, aging positively and fulfilled.«
Today Daniels works as a freelancer, writes articles and a blog, sits houses and says thank you for the mobile home parking space and electricity by helping out.
When an article about her appeared in the Guardian, hundreds of women reached out to share their stories with her.
The pandemic connects people.
In social media of all places, the primeval mud, the place where lies, hatred and envy thrive, women meet who feel similarly and encourage each other.
»I was suicidal myself when my sister died.
And now, at 62, I'm more fulfilled than ever,” says Daniels.
So change is possible, and she wants to share this hope.
»I try to live as authentically and honestly as I can.
My sister and brother didn't have the privilege of aging, so I live my adventure for them too.«
As we leave, I ask what comforts her.
"I cry a lot, allow myself to perceive my feelings," she says.
"And then I pull myself together and entrust myself to life again."