May 5, 2020 Back to the city. Back in “my apartment”. Back to normal.
But what is normality? Everyone is talking about it. Everyone wants to go back. Everyone wants normalcy again.
Now I have taken this step. And I can tell you: it’s boring. Always the same faces when I go shopping. The same reactions when strangers see me on the streets. Tuck-tucks whizzing through the district. Street dogs that sleep during the day and deal with their territorial fights with a loud bark at night. Dusty air. The garbage on the streets. The sizzling midday sun. Prepare the coffee the Turkish way. The Egyptian food. The Arabic language that surrounds me as soon as I open the window. I hear the constant honking even without opening the window. The sight of the pyramids when I go to Cairo. Now I also know what time it is when I hear the muezzin.
Everything that was unusual and strange at the beginning has now become normal. So is normality the state we got used to? Is it the situation that we have experienced before and which are repeated over and over again? Are we conditioning ourselves? Or do we just follow the conditioning of others?
To go new ways means to shape your life with your mind and heart. And that is far from easy. For yourself. And for the environment. When we dare to do something new every day, try something new, we surprise ourselves. Even if it’s just a little thing. This keeps our minds awake and the heart rejoices. And people think we’re crazy. Because we behave differently than they are used to. So mankind is a creature of habit. Habit may not be good or bad at first. Probably just a structure that mankind needs to understand the system he calls life. Yes. The habit. It is the one who wants everything to be the same now. Security pretends. The normalcy wants. In which the heart and brain are ideally switched off.
Human being is the only living being that does senseless things.
– Richard David Precht
Interesting to see how thoughts develop. As they have formulated in such a way, or something similar. How our thoughts can manipulate us. Or how we manipulate our thoughts. Or even that of our fellow human beings.
The current signs of the times brought us out of our habit of mind. We were even kicked out of our habit. We have been stopped to ponder: do our thoughts control us? Or do we control them? Then what am I? How did I live all my life? Do I want to continue doing this? What can I change? What to improve? And … oh dear … will I die someday?
I am on the balcony. In the hammock. It is 1am at night. What are the people doing on the street? It sounds like boxes are being reloaded. Accompanied by loud talks. Boxes from the transporter could be brought to the supermarket. That’s how it sounds. A motorcycle drives past. And all that, even though lockdown has been going on for four hours. The lockdown is also of little interest to the pack of dogs I am just seeing. They make their route.
And I almost fooling myself. I almost lived the normality of life. But I have to laugh at myself. What is normal? I celebrate in my own way every day. Every day is special. Every day I let myself be surprised by life. After all, I don’t know how long I’ll be in Egypt. So, I make the best of it. That is probably a way of life that is intensified by traveling.
Who knows how long we have been here. On earth. So, let’s make the most of it. And the best is definitely far from normality. We are in times of great change. A lot of things are moving at once. Let’s go. Into a new era: craziness-ity.
