So, let’s start this week a bit heavier again and then hopefully end it light. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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 \u2013 people and their motivation, opinions, fairness \u2013 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\u2026 what else? No idea. I don’t know and if I ever find out: Ich habe es nicht gewusst.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Written on January 21, 2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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?…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-orangebooklet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stories.squaredant.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stories.squaredant.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stories.squaredant.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stories.squaredant.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stories.squaredant.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stories.squaredant.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":112,"href":"https:\/\/stories.squaredant.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111\/revisions\/112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stories.squaredant.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stories.squaredant.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stories.squaredant.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}