Photo: Daniel Pilar
How we find hope in dark times
By JOHANNA DÜRRHOLZ and FRANZISKA PRÖLL (text),
MAXIMILIAN VON LACHNER and DANIEL PILAR (photos)
Photo: Daniel Pilar
November 25, 2022 · War, climate change, pandemic, inflation, energy crisis - and now November too!
How do you keep up?
We spoke to people who can do it, despite everything.
Now we have to get up in the dark again.
In the morning fog lies over the roofs of the city, noises from the apartment below us come upstairs, the hot water boiler rumbles, the Ukrainian family downstairs is up early, they have been living here for a short time, and sometimes you can hear the little girl on the balcony in Russian hearing on the phone with dad who stayed at home.
As long as it is still possible, we will go to the office, as long as the number of cases and incidences allow it, as long as the flu is still sparing us.
Half the staff stays at home because of the cold, the mood is bad.
On the train, a man does not wear a mask, another takes it off to sneeze.
We go out in the morning in the dark, we come back in the dark in the evening.
day in, day out.
We only turn on the heating when there is no other option, sleep under two blankets and take the hot-water bottle to bed with us.
We think back to summer.
We hope it will be warmer soon, we know it will certainly be warm again, very warm in fact, and that's not good news at all.
November has always been depressing.
This time we are spending it in a state of emergency - in the midst of several inseparable crises: pandemic, war, energy crisis, climate change.
The exception has long since become normal.
We have gotten used to only using “crisis” in the plural.
We have integrated "Zeitenwende" into our basic vocabulary.
We are no longer hopeful, but fundamentally skeptical.
Larysa Zharkov
“I was helped by a Ukrainian song: 'There is hope!
As long as the sun shines, the water flows.'”
Larysa Zharkova, 49, is a teacher.
She fled to Bremen because of the war in Ukraine.
Photo: Daniel Pilar
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Every morning
I wake up and feel hope.
I hope the day will bring something good, something new, something to learn from.
At the beginning of March I fled to Bremen with my family from our Ukrainian homeland.
Now I have confidence in myself again and can feel hope again.
When the war started, when we fled, I was just desperate.
I didn't know what the future would bring - if I even had one.
We lived in Kyiv.
Bombs exploded not far from our apartment.
My sister said, "We can't stay.
It is too dangerous."
At the end of February we packed our things.
By "we" I mean two of my three children and I, my sister and her husband, my mother, my niece and her son.
We all wanted to escape together.
As a family.
My mother and niece are in wheelchairs.
That's why we couldn't just leave, but had to organize a means of transport.
After about five days we came into contact with Caritas.
Helpers drove us to Poland in a bus.
They took us to a fire station near the border with Germany where we were stuck for a few days.
It was difficult for me to calm down there.
The fire station was full of people, there were no real beds and no showers either.
But there were tables and something warm to eat.
One evening I was sitting with my family
we ate soup with sausages and talked, so we had the idea of singing songs.
Just like we used to do at family reunions.
Singing was like meditation for me.
I calmed down and managed to believe again that better times are ahead.
A Ukrainian song that helped me goes like this: “There is hope!
As long as the sun shines, as long as the water flows.”
My sister wrote to many German aid organizations from Poland.
The Martinsclub, a club from Bremen, answered.
They said they had a bus and housing for disabled people.
They invited us to ride with them.
A few days later we were on our way.
On March 16th we arrived in Bremen.
The first days were difficult.
We had never all lived under one roof before.
Added to this were all the emotions that an escape brings with it.
What helped me a lot were walks through nature.
It may sound strange, but my favorite thing to do is walk across the cemetery near our apartment, a large, well-kept park with old trees and colorful flowers.
This place reminds me that we only have one life.
That we should take the lemon and make lemonade out of it.
My younger daughter, 18 years old, is now studying computer science in Berlin.
My son, 16 years old, goes to an international school in Bremen.
My older daughter, 25 years old, has been living in Berlin for a long time, speaks German very well and helps us with all the papers.
I'm learning German.
And I teach English to Ukrainian students because I'm a teacher.
My mother finds it harder to accept that she is now in Germany.
She was nine years old when World War II ended.
Nevertheless, she tries to take the situation with humor.
"In hopeless times, love, nature and humor help," she always says.
And jokes: "My father, the soldier, celebrated the victory in Berlin.
I made it even further, to Bremen.”
We don't want to stop at this point.
We want to find hope again.
So we go on a search.
First, let's understand what hope actually is.
A feeling?
A mood?
A setting?
Or a principle?
We explore what it takes to develop hope, and we ask ourselves: does hope actually still make sense in the midst of overlapping crises?
Do we need hope to take action?
Or does the desire for hope even get in the way of action?
During his time as a professor at the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf, the philosopher Dieter Birnbacher wrote an essay entitled “Hope – a philosophical approach”.
In it, he sharpens the term, which, often used, seems almost meaningless in the current debates.
A feeling, says Birnbacher on the phone, cannot be hope.
It is not necessarily felt.
"And it can't be a mood either, because it doesn't necessarily go hand in hand with certain emotional states." Birnbacher therefore describes hope as "an attitude, a perspective on things".
Some people, he says, tend to have a pessimistic perspective.
"The water glass is half empty for them.
Others see it as half-full, they see the positive in something – even in times of crisis.
HOPE IS SOMETHING INDIVIDUAL
According to Birnbacher, in order to be able to hope at all, a person needs certain prerequisites.
“The one who hopes needs certain cognitive abilities: the ability to think and the ability to consider and evaluate possibilities.” Humans must therefore be able to think in terms of hope.
So hope is something individual.
That became clear to us when we talked about it with very different people.
What are they hoping for?
What did you do when hope was gone, swallowed up by fate or times?
And what gave them new hope again?
Rainer Städing
"I accepted the catastrophe."
Rainer Städing, 66, is a forester and recently retired.
Photo: Daniel Pilar
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As a forester
, I sometimes thought: "Whoa, that's all hopeless!" I particularly remember two low points.
A spruce forest died out near Wolfsburg.
It started in 2002, within three years the whole area had died, an area of 200,000 square meters.
Bark beetles nested everywhere.
That hurts.
I had tried to take care of the forest and make it fit for the future.
Suddenly I realized: Everything I did was in vain.
My second low point was similar: in 2019 I helped a forester friend in the south of Lower Saxony.
The colleague, a busy man, could not find peace in his head.
Coordinating tree damage, timber sales and forest machines – he was busy around the clock with that.
I represented him for four weeks before he went into burnout.
As I walked through the forest, I saw trees everywhere that were infested with the bark beetle.
Due to the drought, these pests multiply rapidly.
We foresters are so few that we can't keep up with identifying all the affected trees in time.
I discovered so much damage I felt like I was fighting windmill blades.
On top of that, shortly before my assignment, a storm had raged in my colleague's station.
Trees that had fallen were piled up en masse along the roadside, waiting to be taken to the sawmill.
Beetle-infested trees, fallen trees - this sight affected me deeply.
Shortly thereafter, something happened in me that I cannot describe exactly.
A switch has flipped.
I accepted the catastrophe that was unfolding around me.
I realized,
that I can't stop them.
I thought all I can do is look ahead.
If I turn certain screws, I arm the forest for the future.
So I started planning the reforestation and handed it over to my colleague after four weeks.
It gives me courage to see how committed many colleagues are to redesigning their forests.
For example, where only conifers grow, they start planting beech and red oak.
Mixed forests are what we need in the future: trees of different ages and sizes.
Native tree species such as linden, hornbeam, fir and elm stand alongside non-native tree species such as red oak, Douglas fir, chestnut and hazel.
This mixture provides more stability.
It arms the forest against storm damage, bark beetles and fires.
We all remember the forest fires in Brandenburg and in the Harz Mountains this summer.
They were mainly due to the monoculture.
Planting conifers over a large area means less effort for the forest owner because they require less maintenance.
It is also more economical
because he can sell all the trees to a few sawmills.
But when it comes to climate change, monocultures are unwise.
As a forester, it is my job to advise forest owners and provide insight.
Much of the forest in Germany belongs to private individuals.
If the owner says, "The spruce trees are gone, let's plant new spruce trees, because everything else grows far too long before you get any use out of it", I'm in demand as an empathetic advisor.
I am trying to dissuade him from this fallacy.
Step by step I am working on changing the forest.
That gives me hope.
Just like a project I'm involved in: the Erdmann forests.
I regularly lead groups of up to 50 people through these mixed forests near Bremen.
The best thing is when participants say: "Now I see the forest with different eyes." Then I have made a difference.
The eighteen-year-old schoolgirl hopes for the future, the nurse from the Corona ward hopes that masks will be compulsory.
The single father and widower finds hope in knowing he survived death.
And the refugee Ukrainian pinned hope on trusting in herself.
It gives the forester hope that he can continue to work on preparing our ailing forests for the future even after he has retired.
And the mother is helped by her two-year-old's view of the shaky world: a puddle of rain is enough to jump in or a hug from the grandparents is enough to make her happy.
In conversations with these people, however, it also became clear that hope “depends heavily on social factors,” as the philosopher Birnbacher puts it.
Man is never isolated, but always embedded in social groups.
Their feelings and attitudes shaped the individual, so that hoping is subjective, but also colored collectively.
In everyday language, "hope" is often used synonymously with "wish".
That's not entirely correct.
According to Birnbacher, one can only hope if the event is achievable with a certain probability.
"The hope of winning the lottery is a borderline case, because the probability of winning is very small." It is a wish.
According to the philosopher, this is free, we can wish for the most absurd things.
Hopes, on the other hand, are always directed towards possible, achievable things.
THE YOUNG GENERATION AS BEAM OF HOPE
If you ask Dieter Birnbacher what gives him hope, he points to the younger generation: to people who do not take what they see in previous generations for granted, but instead develop a different lifestyle and form new values.
The fact that many young people publicly stand up for their values leads him to distinguish between active and passive hope.
Nina Herring
"We hope that masks will be compulsory!"
Nina Herring, 51, is the ward manager of the Corona ward and of gastroenterology and diabetology at the Darmstadt Clinic.
Photo: Maximilian von Lachner
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We have
I've already spoken about the question of hope here on the Corona ward, and then I realized: I'm actually always full of hope.
Never hopeless.
For me it goes on and on.
I really enjoy climbing in my free time.
And I have a motto for the via ferrata that also applies here: “Everything will be fine in the end.
And if it doesn't turn out well, it's not the end yet.” That helps me.
If a large number of patients die or many patients are not doing well - and then at the same time we see that many corona measures are not being observed, for example because many people meet and do not keep their distance and politicians still do not react, then there are small ones Indentations of Hope.
But when I get to the station
the employees are laughing and the atmosphere is good too – then my hope returns.
If we are there for each other on the ward, for example if you stand in for each other, that helps us in difficult and stressful situations.
Without my highly professional team I wouldn't have the confidence.
We recently had an older couple who were lying together on the Corona ward.
They wished so much that they could go to rehab together.
The two of us were able to take good care of her in her room – and in the end we were able to let her go together.
Something like that gives me hope.
We have just gotten a new colleague who has just passed her exams.
I was really happy about that - not many colleagues want to go to the Corona ward because the conditions here are different: the protective clothing is heavy and very hot, everything has to be strictly organized, you mustn't forget anything when you enter the area .
Something like this makes me confident: It is recognized that Corona exists.
Our wish is exactly that: that we learn to deal with Corona, to live with it and that our work is recognized.
I have colleagues whose environment she doesn't want to see because they deal with corona patients all the time.
Older colleagues worry that they won't be able to see their grandchildren because of this.
On the other hand, we already had a few patients on the ward who coughed heavily, who had a very low CT value - it was clear that they had Corona.
But they didn't believe it!
I push that away, I can't change the patient's mind, that would take too much strength.
We are now anticipating an increase in cases.
We are currently fully booked and have already opened a second station.
All I can do is motivate my team and be there for everyone.
Our hope is that the courses will be less severe and not so many patients will have to go to the intensive care unit.
We hope,
that the new vaccine works well, that the employees do not fall ill and that politicians make good decisions in relation to the financing of the clinics.
And we hope that the mask requirement will come back!
Passive hope refers to an event that comes about without doing anything for it.
We hope for world peace or that God or someone up there will fix it.
Active hope, on the other hand, focuses on an event that comes about as a result of one's own actions.
As Birnbacher says, it corresponds to what Ernst Bloch introduced into philosophy as the "principle of hope".
"It's a hope that inspires others, spurs them on to take action in the direction of what they hope for," says Birnbacher.
"Speaking to Karl Marx, it is a hope that grips the masses and is possibly capable of producing dramatic results." This spark is crucial to countering great threats.
LIVING AND HOPE IN CLIMATE CHANGE
Great threats are encountered more frequently in the present.
Probably the biggest: climate change.
How can we find hope when we know we are trampling on our own livelihoods?
"For me, hope has nothing to do with pretending that everything will be fine," climate activist Greta Thunberg said in a recent video on her Instagram channel.
“Hope is not given to you, you have to earn it, create it.
Hope means taking action, hope means leaving your comfort zone.” Instead of looking for hope, says Thunberg, you should act yourself – and in turn create real hope.
Mita Hollingshaus
“We want things to get better.
This is our only chance to look positively into the future.”
Mita Hollingshaus, 18, is involved in the city student council.
Photo: Maximilian von Lachner
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When I think
about hope, I think about the future.
I'll graduate from high school next year.
After that I hope to be able to travel a lot and discover the world for myself.
I want to shape my world according to my ideas and the values that are important to me.
Many of my generation are like me.
We try to prioritize new topics.
We ask ourselves how we want to live in the future.
And how we can pass something on to others.
I'm originally from Ethiopia, so it's important to me not to lose touch there.
When I graduate, I would like to spend six months in Ethiopia, preferably for an internship.
Amharic is the official language there.
I speak a few snippets, single sentences, and I'm dying to learn more.
I've been to Ethiopia regularly over the past few years, have met a lot of great people and I'm looking forward to seeing them again.
After my stay abroad, I want to move away from Wiesbaden, where I've lived since 2008, to a new city to study there.
At the moment I can imagine two subjects: medicine, because I did an internship in the operating room, which I really liked.
Or something related to international law to build relationships, across countries.
I look to the future with confidence
Sure, it doesn't look great for my generation: energy crisis, war in Ukraine, climate change and pandemic.
It's happening in quick succession, and there's always more to come.
That is why it is so important to keep hope.
Many in our generation are doing it.
Although the climate crisis is depressing, they don't hole up and say "Whoa, how shit!", but take to the streets and fight.
We have a drive to change something.
We want it to get better.
This is also our only chance to look positively into the future.
I am involved in the Wiesbaden city student council.
There I dedicate myself to many topics, for example I helped organize project days against all forms of discrimination for two schools.
It was particularly important to us not only to sensitize the students, but also the teachers.
They often feel overwhelmed.
That's why we designed workshops for both groups.
In the end, everyone felt they had learned a lot and would like to build on it.
Whether it's about discrimination or any other issue, I think it's our job as a city student council to be present in schools, to reach out to students so that one day when we're out of school, we're one society who acts in an enlightened and sensitive manner.
That's the most important thing for me.
Of course you can think: Why do they insult each other?
But I don't think so.
The way I see it, you can start countering insults early on.
You can work on a more tolerant society early on.
Doing this gives me hope.
Lea Dohm and Mareike Schulze also deal with the world threatened by climate change.
The two psychologists belong to the “Psychologists for Future”.
In their book "Climate Feelings" they examine the emotional impact of the climate crisis.
In the zoom call, they warn of a trap of false hope.
"What we hope for should correspond to reality," says Lea Dohm.
"That means we need a scientifically based fact check to know what we can realistically hope for in relation to the climate catastrophe."
Mareike Schulze herself had once reached a point where she was without hope: she had started to deal with climate change.
"It was like a tsunami that rolled over me.
I wasn't a particularly political person before.
I felt overwhelmed by all the new information and the connections that opened up to me.” She felt guilt and sadness, says Schulze, she was in shock – and fell into a phase of depression.
How did she get out of there?
“It helped me to get to know Lea.
To network.” Schulze wrote an appeal on Facebook, got to know Lea Dohm – and they founded the “Psychologists For Future”.
BECOME PART OF A MOVEMENT
This networking, becoming part of a group or movement - that is something that, according to Schulze and Dohm, gives hope again.
You speak of a “global identity”.
According to Dohm, you can see yourself as part of the big picture and experience that as an individual you are not detached from everything and everyone else.
“We are still part of nature,” says Dohm.
That was her aha moment: realizing that her actions have an impact on other people, "in the most brutal way".
If you allow yourself to understand the overarching connections, you are a good deal further.
Jörn Lauenstein
"I'm no longer afraid of death."
Jörn Lauenstein, 40, is a widower, single father of a daughter (10) and a son (6) and blogs under the title "Our almost perfect life".
Photo: Daniel Pilar
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A day
Before our son was born, my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer.
She started blogging during chemo - I smiled at it at the time, we even argued because she once published an argument we had.
One day after our son's fourth birthday, my wife received another diagnosis: she was going to die.
Brain metastases followed after breast cancer.
Actually, we were always open and honest with each other, but I knew beforehand that my wife would die one day.
I didn't tell her that.
Although she once accused me: You don't believe that I'll get well anyway.
When I found out about brain metastases and she was in the hospital after an operation, it was clear to me:
In most cases, patients have about a year left after diagnosis.
It was like that in the end.
My wife passed away peacefully in the hospice.
Our whole apartment was full of cards and letters from friends and readers of her blog.
It was important to me to inform the readers.
And that's when I realized how good writing was for me.
And the feedback from people anyway.
That gave me strength.
With our two children I had to go back to everyday life.
The four years with cancer in our home were incredibly hard and stressful.
It wasn't all peace, joy, pancakes either - we argued a lot.
For me it was without prospects, that pulled me down so much.
There were several points where I was completely hopeless.
The first cancer diagnosis: You hear so much about it, but it's far removed from your own life.
When we heard that, it was like a death sentence for us.
She still had four years to live.
And then when the call came
that my wife fell asleep - that pulled the rug out from under my feet.
But after all the years of goodbyes and illness, I finally wanted to be happy again after the death of my wife.
As hard as that sounds, it was also a relief.
I couldn't do anything about my wife's illness, just listen.
And in the end I wasn't up to the job anymore.
My children and I have rituals today that help us.
We have a picture of my wife on a dresser and the kids often say “good morning” and “good night” to mommy.
When we go to my wife's grave, we always share good and bad things that have happened since we were last there.
It's always good for me to hear what the children have to say.
But after all the years of goodbyes and illness, I finally wanted to be happy again after the death of my wife.
As hard as that sounds, it was also a relief.
I couldn't do anything about my wife's illness, just listen.
And in the end I wasn't up to the job anymore.
My children and I have rituals today that help us.
We have a picture of my wife on a dresser and the kids often say “good morning” and “good night” to mommy.
When we go to my wife's grave, we always share good and bad things that have happened since we were last there.
It's always good for me to hear what the children have to say.
But after all the years of goodbyes and illness, I finally wanted to be happy again after the death of my wife.
As hard as that sounds, it was also a relief.
I couldn't do anything about my wife's illness, just listen.
And in the end I wasn't up to the job anymore.
My children and I have rituals today that help us.
We have a picture of my wife on a dresser and the kids often say “good morning” and “good night” to mommy.
When we go to my wife's grave, we always share good and bad things that have happened since we were last there.
It's always good for me to hear what the children have to say.
I couldn't do anything about my wife's illness, just listen.
And in the end I wasn't up to the job anymore.
My children and I have rituals today that help us.
We have a picture of my wife on a dresser and the kids often say “good morning” and “good night” to mommy.
When we go to my wife's grave, we always share good and bad things that have happened since we were last there.
It's always good for me to hear what the children have to say.
I couldn't do anything about my wife's illness, just listen.
And in the end I wasn't up to the job anymore.
My children and I have rituals today that help us.
We have a picture of my wife on a dresser and the kids often say “good morning” and “good night” to mommy.
When we go to my wife's grave, we always share good and bad things that have happened since we were last there.
It's always good for me to hear what the children have to say.
what nice things have happened since our last visit and what wasn't great.
It's always good for me to hear what the children have to say.
what nice things have happened since our last visit and what wasn't great.
It's always good for me to hear what the children have to say.
Today I try to take something positive out of all the negative things for myself.
Today I am no longer afraid of death.
I was always terrified of dying.
I used to be afraid of seeing my wife again after she died.
But when she died, there was no question in my mind that I should go straight away and spend the whole night with her.
I've gotten braver.
We organize our time together very differently today.
We used to live side by side.
Now we do an awful lot together in our free time.
The active hope that the philosopher Birnbacher speaks of is called “constructive hope” by psychologists, based on the Swedish psychologist Maria Ojala.
Dohm and Schulze translate “constructive hope” with another word: confidence.
You know from psychology that hope comes from action, keyword: active hope.
They also derive their principle of constructive hope from this: that only those who do something and participate in change can also create lasting hope.
"This is closely linked to the concept of self-efficacy," says Dohm.
So that people feel that their actions make a difference, also for themselves. But isn't that what's so difficult with all the major crises of our time?
That a joint demonstration might briefly set an example
but not reduced CO2 emissions?
That we recognize the big picture - and that's why we know that we can't do much?
According to Dohm, many people are at this point: They have realized that the climate is changing and that something has to change.
However, they doubt whether their own contribution can really change anything.
"RADICAL ACCEPTANCE" AS AN OUTLOOK IN LIFE
Instead of pondering whether one's own contribution is possibly too small to have an effect, instead of questioning one's own actions, one should better practice "radical acceptance", advise Dohm and Schulze in her book.
This means not rebelling against oppressive thoughts or negative feelings, but accepting them rigorously, without any "buts".
The concept came from the Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl.
He survived four concentration camps, including Auschwitz.
Based on his experiences, he developed logotherapy, which focuses on the experience of meaning as a driving force in humans.
Frankl was convinced: "We have to learn and teach the despairing people that it never really matters what we still have to expect from life, rather only what life expects of us!"
Lucia Schmidt
"The six-year-old knows that war is not far from here."
Lucia Schmidt, 40, is the editor of the Sunday newspaper and mother of two sons.
Photo: Maximilian von Lachner
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Wir haben einen sechsjährigen und einen zweijährigen Sohn. Der Kleinere war schon auf dem Weg, als im März 2020 die Pandemie über uns hereinbrach. Er wurde sozusagen in die Krise(n) reingeboren, in eine Welt, die irgendwie nicht mehr zur Ruhe kommen will. Manchmal ertappe ich mich bei dem Gedanken, dass ich froh darüber bin, dass wir uns für das zweite Kind entschieden hatten, bevor auf das Virus Querdenker, Krieg in Europa, Dürre, Inflation, hohe Energiepreise und politisch wie gesellschaftlich angespannte Zeiten folgten.
Wir Mitteleuropäer saßen lange auf einer Insel der Glückseligen. Wir konnten immer zuversichtlich sein. Deutschland kam meist gut durch Krisen – und im Vergleich mit vielen anderen tut es das auch jetzt. Noch immer sind wir in einer privilegierten Situation. Trotzdem: Die Krisen sind auch hier zu spüren. Der richtige Umgang mit Corona ist immer wieder Thema am Küchentisch. Dem Sechsjährigen ist klar, dass gar nicht weit weg von uns Krieg herrscht – und er grübelt darüber. Daneben hört er, dass wir immer vehementer verlangen, dass er alle Lichter ausmacht, und vermehrt über Heizkosten, Energie- und Geldsparen diskutieren. Manchmal sagt er, vor Corona oder vor dem Krieg sei dies und jenes nicht so gewesen. Damit erinnert er mich daran, dass wir rückblickend viel zu selten demütig waren für die friedvollen Zeiten.
Doch der Blick zurück macht auch Hoffnung. In jeder Krise, ob sie weltumspannend oder lokal war, haben sich Menschen gefunden, die sich für das Gute und die Mitmenschen engagiert haben. Sie haben sich mit ihrem Wissen und ihrem Talent für Lösungen eingesetzt. Krisen fördern Innovation. Man darf in diesen Zeiten mal entmutigt sein. Den Kopf in den Sand stecken bringt aber nichts. Diese Haltung versuchen wir unseren Kindern zu vermitteln – ob es um den blöden Tag im Kindergarten geht oder erschütternde Nachrichten aus der Ukraine.
Doch nicht immer gelingt es im Moment, Kindern zu sagen: Morgen wird es sicher besser. Corona verlangt nun schon lange viel Geduld von uns, was der Rest noch von uns fordern wird, wird sich erst zeigen. Ich bin gläubige Christin. Hoffnung ist im Glauben immer gegenwärtig. Man kann sich theologisch über diesen Begriff endlos austauschen. Mit Kindern beim Abendgebet oder wenn ihnen die Tränen kullern oder bei quälenden Fragen kann christliche Hoffnung aber auch einfach heißen: Vertraue darauf, dass da jemand ist, der dich durch die Tage begleitet und beschützt.
Und letztlich, es mag etwas pathetisch klingen, sind es am Ende in Familien oft die Kinder, die ganz unbewusst sich und anderen Zuversicht bieten. Denn dieser Herbst und Winter wird nicht nur hart, er wird auch Schneeballschlachten, Schlittenfahren, Adventskalender, Weihnachtsfeiern, Kürbisschnitzen, Laternenlaufen, Kastaniensammeln, Fasching, Lebkuchen, Eisblumen, Nikolaus und Filmabende mit sich bringen. Und schaut man gemeinsam mit einem Zweijährigen auf diese wankende Welt, braucht es nicht mal all dies, auf was sich der Sechsjährige freut. Da reichen die Regenpfütze zum Reinspringen, die vorbeischleichende Katze, der Bagger am Straßenrand, ein Erdbeereis oder die kuscheligen Arme der Großeltern, um sich am Leben zu erfreuen.
Unser Jüngster hat, während wir Erwachsenen uns seit Monaten von Krise zu Krise schleppen, Sitzen, Laufen, Essen, Sprechen und Treppensteigen gelernt. Nichts davon hat beim ersten, zweiten oder gar dritten Mal funktioniert, aber er hat ganz instinktiv (wie alle Kinder) nie das Versuchen und die Hoffnung aufgegeben, dass es besser wird.
Was lernen wir daraus? Wir können uns nicht jeder Krise auf der Welt annehmen – und schon gar nicht allen gleichzeitig. Ein erster Schritt kann es sein, sich zu informieren. Wie wirkt sich eine Krise auf einen selbst, auf das eigene Umfeld aus? Was können wir – im Kleinen, im Alltäglichen – tun, das nutzen könnte? Brauchen geflüchtete Menschen eine Unterkunft oder Kleiderspenden? Können wir in der Hausgemeinschaft mehr auf Mülltrennung achten? Und verbringen wir genug Zeit mit denen, die uns wirklich wichtig sind?
Then every day it becomes easier to get up in the dark.
Reading the news, looking at the fog over the city, maybe even taking a cold shower.
Then it will be easier to cope with this and all the days to come.
Then it will be easier to sit on the crowded train in the morning and look out the window.
At some point the sun always rises.
What gives you hope?
Write to us at magazin@faz.de.
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