There is the innkeeper who has tried everything to adapt to the currently valid Corona conditions.

He has long since had an app for placing orders, but he has also had difficulties finding staff - some people have orientated themselves differently in the past few months.

There is therefore a total of 15 percent salary increase in the catering trade, in two steps by January 2023. There is the nursing director of a large clinic, who also has to fight for every single employee in nursing, albeit for different reasons - and therefore takes unusual paths .

Carsten Knop

Editor.

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In both cases, neither in gastronomy nor in care, money alone will be enough to compensate for the consequences of the Corona period.

And yet there is fighting: there are the doctors who vaccinate during lunch breaks and on weekends to do everything in their power to overcome the pandemic.

And in all large and small companies in every team there is an effort to keep the troops together, despite Corona, despite unusual celebrations, they take care of each other.

Due to the consequences of the corona pandemic, one only realizes what kind of power it has when people exchange ideas personally.

Corona won't limit us forever

And there are those concerned who write us a lot of letters to the editor because they are losing their trust in politics, in vaccines, and also in journalism. Who do not want to be calmed down because the world is so messed up. In addition, there are many employees in all industries who get along rather poorly than well with the new world of work in the home office, who, despite all efforts, lose contact with their colleagues, have difficulty giving their lives a hold in new routines. Parents who are concerned about their children's education, young adults who are not getting off to a good start in their young adult lives. You have to call out to them at another turn of the year: Corona, at least in its acute, life-limiting form, will not last forever.

In addition, there is already not only Corona - climate change is also still there, digitalization, with its long-unpredictable consequences on everyday life and working life.

Both of these also have a significant impact on your own doorstep.

All you need to do is take a look at the many new data centers that are being built in Frankfurt, which process a volume of data in a single second that the human imagination can no longer grasp - and consume a large amount of electricity in the process.

With both influences, the climate and digitization, there is further uncertainty, beyond Corona.

It doesn't work without optimism

Not all people find it easy to get used to new software solutions in the company, to numerous organizational changes that are forced by the change in the respective business model of the employer. And about the climate, it can be enlightening to talk to a fisherman at the sea. It is becoming easier and easier to sell the catch because the demand is increasing. However, hardly any herrings or cod end up in the net. The sea is no longer cold enough in winter. Closer to the area, on the other hand, is a walk in the forest with a forester from HessenForst. In recent years, the bark beetle has found optimal conditions in the forests due to drought and heat. But the trees it attacked are gone now.

What should one hope for at the turn of the year when looking at these developments?

Is optimism the right thing to do when there are so many points of criticism?

Is expectation allowed on New Year's Eve?

Yes, because it wouldn't work without faith: there is something interesting about it in an old book from the library of the long deceased father.

Apart from the fact that at all times there would have been enough reasons to let all hope go: "Hope", it says, means to expect something important, to wish for it, to plan it, to long for it.

The present is just a stopover

Researchers and lovers could not find if they did not search; they could not search if they did not hope to find. That's right: we don't go on dates (maybe not with so many people at the moment), don't go on vacation (maybe not that far away), don't go to work (even if only to the home office) if we didn't hope so would be good for us. Children would not be born if parents did not hope that they would say yes to their lives one day. "Hope is the stuff our souls are made of," the French philosopher Gabriel Marcel once wrote. In other words: if you have no hope, you will suffocate in the present.

"After us will come - nothing worth mentioning." This word from Bert Brecht could give the motto, especially in these Corona months, for everyone whose horizon ends with their own well-being. But is what will come after us perhaps the more worth mentioning? “What is is not already true, but what becomes is true,” wrote the German philosopher Ernst Bloch. Everything is always in flux, holding on to the here and now is not enough. The present is always just one station on the way to the future.

So what can be done to turn irreplaceable hope into certainty?

Taking on responsibility and less blocking for fear of failure;

to be guilty.

And say thank you for a year that somehow succeeded in the vast majority of cases - despite everything.

In which one had to laugh a lot, maybe even at one's own shortcomings.