So, let’s start this week a bit heavier again and then hopefully end it light.
There are boxes in my head, they come and go, some stay for a long time (always) and some show up sporadically, or perhaps opportunistically. Love for my wife and love for my daughter? Rock-solid. Dutchman? Check. Entrepreneur? Recently. Liberal? Most of the time. Well, with a little imagination you probably get it.
But what about the boxes in my head regarding the country I live in today? Do those boxes that filled my mind when I lived in the Netherlands reach the same gray matter in China? Am I myself here?
In China I see more but say less. To someone I spoke to last week, I expressed it as such: China keeps you naive. In a sense, this is a positive thing. Everything I think to understand in the Netherlands – people and their motivation, opinions, fairness – falls into a deep, dark hole here. Not that I understood everything in the Netherlands, but I thought so. Or if not, I looked for an explanation that was easy to find.
Looking for explanations is not an essential skill here in China. The mortal feels the power of the immense, like a glacial tongue dragging along in its stream the largest boulders. Thoughts and explanations are entertaining, but completely useless and, above all, finite.
That’s where the naivety lies. Usually I refuse to believe the above. In the end a glacier is just water, it flows and melts and evaporates and then it’s gone.
Sandwiched between the ice and the boulders, the horizon is palpable. Further on, more of my kind are trapped. They are humiliated with singing songs, learning a new language, cutting, knitting and… what else? No idea. I don’t know and if I ever find out: Ich habe es nicht gewusst.
Written on January 21, 2019