The unidentifiable beauty of a small world
Oh yes, I worry a lot. There are so many unfair, violent and life-threatening moments in the world today that when you would look a bit further than the stories told on the news, you would be shitting your designer jeans. How nice it must be to live in the cocoon of a personal career, knocking down anyone with your elbows who comes in the way of your journey to the top. In some families that’s just a tradition, others learn those skills along the way. It’s the easy way of living, not wanting to worry about anybody else, managing your own life as if you are the centre of the universe, deciding within a blink of an eye to join the immoral rat race. Yes, with those capabilities you are born at the right place and time in history, where all remembrance of what happened in the last century is erased in the heads of populist bastards and the ignorance of the crowd is celebrated by rewarding them with “champions league” and “Superbowl” broadcasts, Netflix series and talent shows combined with Coca-Cola, I-phone and McDonald's adverts and the occasional hate speech about all others who are to blame. The world is on fire, all signs of history repeating itself are obvious. The same people responsible for the dark days, more than half a century ago, are pulling the strings again, or when not, educated their offspring into becoming clones of the family traditions.
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I’m living in this tiny, relatively peaceful and save world. A little village at the end of an unknown dead-end exit of another village where the only representative of the law comes along on horseback, of course only on sunny days. But even the old folks on the village square are talking about the news they see on TV, the threats of all these other people that want to invade their country, take over all properties, force their traditions and believes on them. They’ve never met a Muslim and although some of them have been in Angola some time in there life, it’s still a silent gazing moment when somebody with a dark skin is passing thru the village. There’s no Mosk around, no community of religious foreigners and the single traditional dressed eastern woman I’ve ever seen, in the nine years I’ve been living this rural life, is at the language course. It turned out she was a Christian, a refugee out of Iran. So where does all this fear for “them” come from? It must be because somebody convinced them to be afraid. It can’t be out of experience that for sure. The good thing about living in a small community is having a choice. The choice to be informed or not, to follow the news on TV or the Internet or not, to just ignore all messages from the outside world and choose to live a happy life, only solving problems of personal nature. Sometimes I do.
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It’s great to just spend time in the workshop, creating and making, without any worldly news penetrating thru the 80 cm thick dry-stone walls. No mobile phone, no radio, just the sound of making sawdust. It’s peaceful, it eases your mind and all that’s important is the wood on the workbench, my personal therapy that works better than any yoga or mind-fullness exercise. After a few hours of inhaling dust and enjoying the smell of fresh cut lumber and the perfume of “au bain-marie” liquefied wax, I choose to be informed. A coffee or two or three, scrolling thru social media, watching some news on TV from different countries, just because “facts” seem to change by the channel, getting upset while looking at the morons that fight for power and afterwards a cooling down period watching an episode of an English, French or German detective series. When Barnaby solves the crime before the 5th dead occurs it’s a success and when the two detectives Scott and Bailey stay the most unattractive actresses on TV, everything turns to normal.
Unlike the people who are forced to run from their country, for whom action movies and war documentaries became real life, I do have a choice. I can shut the TV down, close my laptop and suddenly the whole world turns around the noise of an early tractor coughing like a chain-smoker while firing up or the neighbours' goat that ate some roses… I do have a choice, to be or not to be living in a small world.
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I’m living in this tiny, relatively peaceful and save world. A little village at the end of an unknown dead-end exit of another village where the only representative of the law comes along on horseback, of course only on sunny days. But even the old folks on the village square are talking about the news they see on TV, the threats of all these other people that want to invade their country, take over all properties, force their traditions and believes on them. They’ve never met a Muslim and although some of them have been in Angola some time in there life, it’s still a silent gazing moment when somebody with a dark skin is passing thru the village. There’s no Mosk around, no community of religious foreigners and the single traditional dressed eastern woman I’ve ever seen, in the nine years I’ve been living this rural life, is at the language course. It turned out she was a Christian, a refugee out of Iran. So where does all this fear for “them” come from? It must be because somebody convinced them to be afraid. It can’t be out of experience that for sure. The good thing about living in a small community is having a choice. The choice to be informed or not, to follow the news on TV or the Internet or not, to just ignore all messages from the outside world and choose to live a happy life, only solving problems of personal nature. Sometimes I do.
.
It’s great to just spend time in the workshop, creating and making, without any worldly news penetrating thru the 80 cm thick dry-stone walls. No mobile phone, no radio, just the sound of making sawdust. It’s peaceful, it eases your mind and all that’s important is the wood on the workbench, my personal therapy that works better than any yoga or mind-fullness exercise. After a few hours of inhaling dust and enjoying the smell of fresh cut lumber and the perfume of “au bain-marie” liquefied wax, I choose to be informed. A coffee or two or three, scrolling thru social media, watching some news on TV from different countries, just because “facts” seem to change by the channel, getting upset while looking at the morons that fight for power and afterwards a cooling down period watching an episode of an English, French or German detective series. When Barnaby solves the crime before the 5th dead occurs it’s a success and when the two detectives Scott and Bailey stay the most unattractive actresses on TV, everything turns to normal.
Unlike the people who are forced to run from their country, for whom action movies and war documentaries became real life, I do have a choice. I can shut the TV down, close my laptop and suddenly the whole world turns around the noise of an early tractor coughing like a chain-smoker while firing up or the neighbours' goat that ate some roses… I do have a choice, to be or not to be living in a small world.
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