We've all been through the same year, and we've all got our things to say about it. I dare say that only few of you would "strongly agree" with the notion that the last year was a success. I spent much of the last year in my mother's house, in a little village in Germany, right by the Belgian and Dutch border. While this place was a heavenly place to live through early childhood,
being a 30-something paper chaser with global ambitions has fared badly. The only possible activity around here is "going for a walk" which has been the greatest gift of any lockdown scenario but also exposes you to what the village population, average age 65, has come to perceive in this last quarter of their lifetime. "I can't complain", says Karen from the house around the corner, "but it's all shit, isn't it? Trouble, trouble, always trouble". And if you give Karen a chance to go on, she will tell you everything about her hard life in Germany as a boomer.
Karen was born right after the war. She met her husband age 16 when her father, a factory worker, started training a new kid, age 17, at his workplace and thought he makes a fine gentleman. They married and bought the house around the corner when Karen was pregnant with her first child at age 22. Her father had died after working at the factory his whole life, so the 15.000 Deutsche Mark Karen inherited from her father paid for the downpayment on the house. Karen had two more children and lived in the house with a patio facing the forest for the rest of her days. Her youngest daughter lives in the house with her because it has six bedrooms and therefore offers enough rooms for Karen, her husband and her daughter's family. The heart of the house is the large south-facing garden with sunshine throughout the day. Her two sons live a ten and a thirty minute drive away. Karen still does her own shopping but yes, she can tell she's getting older.
Right, this is the lady that is telling me that everything is trouble, always. I'm sure when Karen's various dogs passed away, her husband went through that cancer scare and their son had a car accident her faith in Jesus was shaken. "In Jesus name, father, please help my family", would be the only way in which Karen thought she could contribute to getting through these troublesome situations. She spent many nights crying because she was worried. The family never had money problems because her husband's contract at the factory was permanent and, of course, allowed Karen to stay home and care for the kids but when big expenses hit, like a new car for the brood after he'd crashed his car, Karen was hoping for the magic money tree... but it never appeared. But in the end, Jesus always prevailed. Therefore, she always faithfully marked her ballot "Christian Conservatives" as a good Catholic would. Now an old lady, she looks back at a happy life but, boy, was it always easy? No, sir!
I am surrounded by Karen. Ursula, Marianne and Irene tell a similar story. All of them married early, had children and raised them themselves. Raising children is no piece of cake, you know. They are struggling with not seeing their grandchildren often because their kids are too busy. They are coming to terms with their deteriorating bodies and some of them are realizing that they actually haven't learned much since high school because, back in their day, university wasn't a thing. So in "normal times" they enjoy sitting in at university, you know, out of interest for a topic, at a lecture at the local university to "keep their brain sharp". The daily walk through the forest is also getting harder but one's gotta work a little to keep in shape. They are looking forward to the end of the pandemic because then, finally, they can see their grandkids again "without fear" because, you know, they ARE seeing them.
On every walk I take, hearing them talk about how much everything sucks, my bodies reaction to them is firmly engrained on my face; I fail to encourage them after they are complaining about their troubles, the corners of my mouth are physically incapable of coming up and the conversation will end, one way or another, after the sentence "life isn't always easy, huh?" was uttered which seems like an inevitability. They love to compare the Coronavirus pandemic to World War II which, I might add, is a disaster they never had to live through. But they heard a lot, and it sounds worse which I'm sure it was. They have heard of all kinds of trouble: Bosnia in the 90s, 9/11 and, oh my, the 2008 mortgage crisis sounds like a lot of hardship. But here in the village, they were spared, thank God.
Maybe one day I will look just as dumb as Karen. It's likely that by the time I hit her age, my nephew Tammo will have had to literally save the planet with his action while I celebrate I have been able to grow up in what they used to call "democracy". We will fondly look back to the day when potatoes were grown on a field, not a lab. It doesn't look like it gets easier Earth-side for the generations to come but every time I see Karen I have a strong desire to tell her about "us". About how we will never own a flat, never mind a house in this neighborhood. How the only people that will be able to have this heavenly childhood of mine are Karen, Ursula, Marianne and Irene's children because that's how homeownership works now: you either inherit, or well, there is no house for you. I tell her how we studied at university not to keep our brain sharp but to stand a chance at getting a job, and how even all of this studying, working 70h weeks for free to hope for the "break" and never ever knowing "security" in a job I still get paid less than all the men on the team and some of the women that are better at deception than me. And how nothing is permanent in our lives, despite the contracts, because in a world of 8 billion there is always another "you".
The stress of being me is unreal. Without knowing Karen aside from her complaints during a Sunday walk, I envy her. Her liberty to complain is a luxury I don't have as the only thing I have left in this pandemic is optimism. The day I stop closing my eyes with force from seeing what is happening to this planet, my generation, my future, I lose. I lose! Having worked hard all my life got me the fancy job but is failing to get me, and will continue to fail to finance my own home. My fancy job is gone the minute I make a baby and if I make a baby, the mortgage I am hoping for if I ever get paid fairly to buy a one bedroom apartment with a north-facing window, if any windows, is unlikely to be paid. I've wanted a dog my whole life but given that I would need to live next to a green space to have one, and that means a 50k increase in price due to an "in demand" location, determines for now, with 32 years under my belt, a tech job at a company literally everyone on this planet knows, and just a single income, I can't have one. And I am one of the lucky ones. I might make it happen one day. And that despite not having a father with a company or rich friends...
The reason I complain about this is not self-pity. In fact, if there ever was someone I really pitied it would be those who come after me, finding this planet in even worse shape, witnessing the diminishing effects of hard work altogether and having to rely simply on luck to possibly make their dreams come true. Younger people just spent a year indoors to save the lives of Karen and the likes and have to now watch Karen go on an international beach vacation without testing because she's had the Pfizer shot twice while the younglings wait until it's their turn in the prioritization list. Being old in 2020 was certainly not an easy thing, but being young in 2020, and any year thereafter, is worse. While boomers enjoyed the simple life in the village, young people are hustling to one day get the shot, just the shot, to have a simple life as well. It most likely won't be a simple life.
Of course, there are no literal Karens in a German village. Our people aren't called "Karen". But you know who they are. Every village has them. And yet, today, watching Karens complain about their "hard lives" that were nothing less than just "lives", hurts me as I look into the future. Germany elects a new government this year. We are asking young people to be optimistic, we are asking them to care. All this makes me think of is "How dare you?" in the voice of one of the only voices we heard in the last decades that probably mattered. There they were, laughing about Greta Thunberg for caring about the planet, calling her a brat. If you're younger than 25 reading this, you have no business calling her spoiled. Because you are. Spoiled with choice, spoiled with a future, spoiled with being able to grow up on a planet that isn't turning on you (or well, you were spoiled enough to allow yourself to ignore it). If I, with the wealth I have accumulated via a mix of soul-destroying hard work and unfathomable luck, feel like owning my own home is out of reach, generations proceeding mine are screwed. Who could they possibly vote for? The saviour of this generation might not have been born yet. Karen will have to lose before the GenZers can win.
And now to the bottom line: How do we fix this? Politics won't, I think we have seen how far that kind of power goes in the last 14 months preeetty well. Not because they don't want to but because they can't. They depend on voters and that's us, you and me. As long as the parties need Karen's vote, they won't be coming forward with a message such as "we are going to tax inheritances like, let's say, a lot". No Karen would not vote for them, rightly so. But as long as we don't actually do what is necessary, like taxing inheritances by, let's say, a lot, the next generation is out of luck. So where do we go from there? Do we wait for Karl Marx to be right or do we manage the inevitable disaster? Of course, fairness ends in taxing those who worked according to belief A when we, one day, just go for belief Z. We can't do that either. So we keep going with the status quo according to Karen. Until it fails.
I'm doing nothing, hypocritically writing a ridiculous blog post to advocate for change I am not a part of, still waiting to be paid not just "well" but "fairly" so I, eventually, might start thinking about a mortgage to enslave me to a bank, an institution I both despise and would love to avoid. But what I do believe in is hope. Maybe one day I'll have the idea or energy to change this. Maybe my desperation about this system will turn into inspiration. And maybe I will just do what everyone else is doing, trying to get out of this feeling by merely buying Bitcoin. Because really, if I don't and the change that needs to happen isn't occurring in my lifetime, I'm just screwed without getting cryptos NOW. I suppose what I'm saying is we're screwed. Except Karen. She's had her life, and it was tough, oh so tough. When it wasn't. Yet, she's gonna be voting for what's best for the next generation. Make it make sense. I can't.
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