Uncertainty and the unknown are probably two of the biggest fears of human beings ever since their creation or better existence. They are so big, that our ancestors created stories and myths, well even God’s to be able to cope with them. When I googled water deities, I found 50, yes fifty, deities to be responsible for water. From the Aztecs to Rome, all around the world and throughout history, we created creatures to better explain what we don’t understand. I mean it makes sense… if I were a fisherman in ancient Greece and I start sailing for multiple months, I also would have liked to ask someone for protection. Other way around, if I were the fisherman’s wife, and I sit alone at home waiting for my husband to come back, I also preferred speaking to someone supposedly responsible for the safety of my husband than just coping with all the fears by myself, right? Over the centuries, humans developed into the stellar creatures we are today. We basically solved almost all the reasons, we created deities for. We can explain how thunder is created, why the harvest is smaller than it is supposed to be, we understand the chemistry behind love, and we know that everything at some point started with a huuuuuuuuge bang… so why are we still so afraid of uncertainty? Is it because we have no control over what happens next? Because we cannot prepare? Right now, we live within one of the biggest pandemics this world has ever seen… they were many scientists who warned about something like this… other viruses like SARS 1 had happened before, but instead of preparing, governments even cut the “pandemic-budget” or simply neglected the risks. On an individual or personal level, Covid exposes us to a degree of uncertainty most of us (or at least I) have not encountered before.
Is our life going to be normal again in a year, in 5 years? Is there going to be a new normal in which everyone wears masks? Is the newsletter of November 2027 going to be about lockdown #242?
I don’t know. I don’t know how my life is going to be in 1/5/10 or 40 years, but I also don’t care somehow. Covid showed me that I basically cannot have any control over my life, only over the way how I react upon it. I am just a tiny pawn, in a gigantic game of chess. So better embrace it, than trying to control the chaos, right? I don’t have to know and understand everything, I don’t even understand nor control myself from time to time, then how could I even think of understanding or controlling my environment. Life is just a crazy dance in the rain, its our decision to stop dancing, take an umbrella or run like 5-year-old, fully naked under the lawn sprinkler.
This brings me to my last point (no, it is not about nakedly running under the sprinkler), more of a huge decision and a huge announcement.
Another family member decided to take his steps into the unknown and for you he still is unknown, but his future is certainly bright. I would like to introduce you to a man to whom words are a concept and silence is martyr. To a man, who told me when I was 5 that the plastic dinosaurs under my bed become real-sized monsters as soon as I sleep. To a man, who always says Coca-Cola, Fanta Limón, whenever I talk Spanish. To a man who plays soccer 99% of the time in the horizontal position because he straddles again, but still somehow managed to break more of his bones than of his opponents. A man who is as I am, a proud member of team redhead. A man who waited already for 17 years to join our team… people say it was the main reason why he was interested in my sister in the first place… please give a warm round of applause and a heartwarming welcome to my brother-in-law and most likely father of my nephews and nieces and newest UPM-member, Karsten Rieckmann.
We are going to adapt and adjust to each other until we figured out the perfect way of working together. I keep you posted!
Until then, let’s make some business.