Like every New Year’s Eve, we also did a round in which everyone looked back on his or her past year. This has become a less cheerful cycle in recent years, with more health problems and loved ones dying, but there is always something to be happy or satisfied with. This year we talked very little about ourselves, at least, our own lives were more than usual in the light of what is happening in the world. Of course, you never live outside the world, but there are times when you can imagine that you can ignore the world for a while.
Why is that more difficult now? By Rutte and his war? I don’t believe that, it wasn’t actually that specific. It was more about the general feeling of threat and violence, the unsavory political climate and the overly warm actual climate, which makes simply enjoying ‘the weather’ suddenly feel strange. On a cold winter day you think: nice, nice and cold weather, also more pleasant for those worrying statistics, then you realize that we will be heating up more.
And that immediately brings you to the underlying feeling in all this talk: powerlessness. Okay, we burn less and buy a thick sweater (no! don’t buy anything!), we drink oat milk that participates in the pig cycle, we eat very expensive hand-grown carrots, we take the crowded train and what we or you or anyone else do or don’t do does, it is a drop in the all too literal bucket.
Which doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it, because otherwise we won’t do anything, and together we can, etc., etc., etc.
And then that other powerlessness, that of the news. Sometimes I just don’t read or watch. I do know that in Gaza all the hospitals have now been bombed and destroyed and the television news keeps showing despair, there, or in Georgia, in Ukraine, in Afghanistan. Sometimes you see a brave blogger or read about a very fearless journalist who has not yet been arrested or shot, and someone like that says: the world needs to know what is going on here.
Well, the world knows that. And the world says phrases like ‘Israel has the right to defend itself’ and argues about whether or not genocide and also finds trade in aircraft parts very important and that’s it. You are embarrassed by the Western world with its bluster about democracy, freedom and human rights. And yes, also for yourself if you’re grumbling about it. But still: the fact that agreements and legal rules are repeatedly pushed aside also undermines faith in what you do yourself. And we always live from a faith or belief, even if it has no religious aspect. Then we believe in justice and humanity, in love and goodness, in the meaning of what you do or don’t do – that belief makes you derive joy from your existence.
So it is of course not a solution to bury your head in the sand and stop reading the newspaper and continue to emit some greenhouse gases.
In de Volkskrant I read an interview with historian Philip Blom who has written a book about ‘Hope’ and in NRC Geert Mak said that he could not live without hope. They’re right. And even though it is more difficult to talk about the events in your own life, those events matter too. After all, it’s your life. Our lives.