Winter lives
An Essay from Jörg Bauer
I read the news on my computer - better I started off with news and meanwhile drifted to the culture pages. I see images of people in wonderful snowy winter landscapes. Here there is no snow. A brief glance out of my office window only finds the final busyness of suburb at the years end. I wish I would be spending a day in the snow wearing colorful and fashionable wool outfits and jumping up in the air. It has not snowed so far I tell my daughter because we will likely soon hear the news that this has been the warmest December measured in a hundred years.
My 14 year old daughter is mainly unaware both of the implications or causes. She’s unconcerned and optimistic. I wish I could spend a day in a winter landscape and maybe someday she will be wishing this too. At the dinner table last night I told her a few other things that maybe I shouldn't have. I told her that when you are young you have high expectations and they promise a future that mostly turns out less bright than hoped, that this loss of grand believes about the future will continue until she hits 50 and only then things will slowly turn around again. She replied that she wants to marry rich and that money will make her happy. She’s very convinced of that even though I’ve told her that most research into happiness says otherwise. I’d like to spend a winters day outside but in fact my secret dream is bigger: I’m dreaming of a life without paid work.
So it appears that I at 49 have reached the bottom of unhappiness and she at 14 is yet completely insane. What does growing older mean then? It means that most grief and most responsibility hits you when you haven’t yet fully mastered an understanding of life, when there is a lot to be lost. And it feels like there never was more to be lost. Awakening at 49 I find myself right as if balancing in the middle of a tightrope spanning a canyon. I’ve walked too far to return and try anew - but the end is still concealed in clouds.
I wish to still be able to escape on days like these to a new life, a dream of living in self-determination - at least what concerns my work. I have mastered most of what society once wanted from me with more or less pain on the way. I now sit in my office and realize that I became unfree. I wonder is it an unavoidable fact of life to become unfree? What happens to us between 50 and 75 that supposedly makes us thankful for what we have and not unthankful for what we don’t? It must be a miracle. I myself long to play, I’ve forgotten how to play -It must be a faint memory of play that plagues me every day. Winter, snow, pulling sledges the sun going down slowly at the end of an long cold afternoon. Red cheeks and pressed smiles.
Growing old is grieving a lost childhood yet my daughter is trying to escape it as quickly as she can. It seems we rarely want what we have. I want to be silly, I want to bathe in the white purposelessness that must be out there somewhere, escaping time. My daughter being all full of time and plans. I am too but I start to realize that all my plan-making will unavoidably and naturally shrink.
All the lives I had wanted to live will gradually be reduced to maybe 3 or 2 or just 1. The sheer thought of all the lives unlived makes me sad if I think about it, so I don’t. Perhaps my daughter was right. After all, perhaps money does help. Getting into jet planes and changing lives in hours is a privilege of the rich - maybe she is right and maybe I am insane for still grieving all my lives lost.
I read the news on my computer - better I started off with news and meanwhile drifted to the culture pages. I see images of people in wonderful snowy winter landscapes. Here there is no snow. A brief glance out of my office window only finds the final busyness of suburb at the years end. I wish I would be spending a day in the snow wearing colorful and fashionable wool outfits and jumping up in the air. It has not snowed so far I tell my daughter because we will likely soon hear the news that this has been the warmest December measured in a hundred years.
My 14 year old daughter is mainly unaware both of the implications or causes. She’s unconcerned and optimistic. I wish I could spend a day in a winter landscape and maybe someday she will be wishing this too. At the dinner table last night I told her a few other things that maybe I shouldn't have. I told her that when you are young you have high expectations and they promise a future that mostly turns out less bright than hoped, that this loss of grand believes about the future will continue until she hits 50 and only then things will slowly turn around again. She replied that she wants to marry rich and that money will make her happy. She’s very convinced of that even though I’ve told her that most research into happiness says otherwise. I’d like to spend a winters day outside but in fact my secret dream is bigger: I’m dreaming of a life without paid work.
So it appears that I at 49 have reached the bottom of unhappiness and she at 14 is yet completely insane. What does growing older mean then? It means that most grief and most responsibility hits you when you haven’t yet fully mastered an understanding of life, when there is a lot to be lost. And it feels like there never was more to be lost. Awakening at 49 I find myself right as if balancing in the middle of a tightrope spanning a canyon. I’ve walked too far to return and try anew - but the end is still concealed in clouds.
I wish to still be able to escape on days like these to a new life, a dream of living in self-determination - at least what concerns my work. I have mastered most of what society once wanted from me with more or less pain on the way. I now sit in my office and realize that I became unfree. I wonder is it an unavoidable fact of life to become unfree? What happens to us between 50 and 75 that supposedly makes us thankful for what we have and not unthankful for what we don’t? It must be a miracle. I myself long to play, I’ve forgotten how to play -It must be a faint memory of play that plagues me every day. Winter, snow, pulling sledges the sun going down slowly at the end of an long cold afternoon. Red cheeks and pressed smiles.
Growing old is grieving a lost childhood yet my daughter is trying to escape it as quickly as she can. It seems we rarely want what we have. I want to be silly, I want to bathe in the white purposelessness that must be out there somewhere, escaping time. My daughter being all full of time and plans. I am too but I start to realize that all my plan-making will unavoidably and naturally shrink.
All the lives I had wanted to live will gradually be reduced to maybe 3 or 2 or just 1. The sheer thought of all the lives unlived makes me sad if I think about it, so I don’t. Perhaps my daughter was right. After all, perhaps money does help. Getting into jet planes and changing lives in hours is a privilege of the rich - maybe she is right and maybe I am insane for still grieving all my lives lost.
