When I poured my coffee this morning, I had an enlightenment!
I finally know who the Klingons are!
They are the ones who "cling on" to strict self-narraty!
HaHaHa!! What a brilliant idea of the screenwriter to create this term.
Get me right! I am also very often a Klingon.
But I also remember how irritated I was at the time when I bet on the folly that self-empowerment had something to do with money, with prestige and took part in a snowball system, fascinated by the charismatic and quite friendly speaker on stage, who opened my eyes for the first time. He said to us: "There is a large grey mass out there that earns on average two thousand marks in income per month." Immediately he had spotted me!
In the course of the long evening, accompanied by excitement and loud clapping, everything came down to the question: "Do you want to continue to belong to the grey mass? "No!", the hall shouted, and everyone set about organizing five thousand marks to participate in the great cake of happiness. So did I and my boyfriend at the time. I went home happy and cheerful and told all my friends about the novelty to escape the grey of everyday life and to put an end to the senselessness of life!
Hooray!
How astonished I was when my friends didn't want to agree with me. I thought: it is only money! Let's take it easy and just find three more people who have some money left and then we all get rich! I was alienated by the seriousness with which I encountered resistance. They really clung to their money. There was nothing to be done about it.
They already knew more than I did!
I was seized by a kind of humor where I realized that the whole serious money-making business was indeed a great joke. In fact, I thought, "What have I got to lose? How simple some things can be!"
But I hadn' t expected my friends and colleagues to believe the opposite! They thought that the sour earned bread rolls should not be thrown out of the window just like that. Moreover, they were more than sceptical that other frivolous people could be found who had adopted the same attitude.
To my great astonishment, they remained right!
My thought at that time was: "It is not risky at all! You don't have to do anything! Not even work! You simply get the money from the bank, give it to the system and get it back many times over!" Why didn't the others see that this was a mathematical phenomenon that had to be considered mathematically?
But I was wrong. Because the working ethos of my culture is quite different. Deeply, deeply rooted in the Christian view of work lies the belief embedded in the thought that one has to work in the face of one's sweat. Meanwhile I agree on the beauty of skillful working but not on the sweat. Except it's good smelling one.
In the following decades I changed my view from light-footed to melancholic, back to light-footed, back to melancholic. I resented people who had a "passive income", then I resented people who worked like berserks for their few toads. I thought: Why, there is money in abundance! It's mathematics! There are no limits, because zeros and ones can be multiplied at will!
1s and 0s - This, you'll agree with me, is a world-famous fact.
But of course people were not completely wrong when they rejected the whole thing as a crazy idea. They even hoped that I should get a bloody nose to learn an important lesson in life. Money, first of all, is a serious matter and money, secondly, is something that only the others have, but you better keep your hands off it.
So people! I have learned.
Life went on.
Funny substances
Next I tried all sorts of other things with the same attitude. I used mind-altering drugs in the easiness that seemed to be somehow intrinsic to me and often chalked up as naivety. From then on I thought, "Ah, so being naive is a bad thing".
That wounded me. Whenever someone gave me a good idea and I presented it to my people full of radiance and enthusiasm, there was something to complain about.
I didn't like the fact that these many fascinating ideas and projects in the world had been maggotized. Which didn't stop me from remaining open-minded and developing a certain amnesia to the effect that every novelty that I presented so happily also encountered adversaries.
My trademark, which became somewhat typical, was that I come around the corner with topics that my people reciprocate with loving benevolence or alternately with boredom or penetrating aversion. Or complete disinterest paired with mild head shaking.
Trying to become miserable on purpose
I had heard all warnings and all exhortations to caution have very well been registered by me. I also really tried to get myself on a horror trip. Once I ingested a substance, I went to the toilets to try to "get off badly". As I sat there on the toilet bowl and deliberately tried to become negative, I had to laugh at myself so much that I gave up this attempt and threw myself back onto the dance floor. Life in such moments was simply too beautiful.
Meanwhile I am a little too old for that.
Are you a Kling-on too?
What makes a Klingon so special is that he hears an idea and then quickly runs off to tell it to everyone else! He doesn't wait, but wants to finish the battle as quickly as possible to get into the Stovokor. That is on this side of the hereafter. The Klingon wants to be a teacher even before he has stopped being a student.
I know that those who gave me advice and said, "Beware," were Klingons too. Not many people meet you who are a Yoda. Probably nobody believes that there are Yodas anyway. But I believe that.
I like it when I see people expressing humor. I admire them and find inspiration in them. No teacher who didn't even laugh or turn a blind eye has ever fascinated me. But "spell" is also dangerous, of course. You quickly become a Klingon again.
Recently I watched a play. The actors delighted me! They were very young and partly very talented stage actors. In my eyes they are better teachers than those who write about meditation and fool themselves; including myself. If they could at least amuse themselves about themselves, but you think you have to pretend that all this is a very serious business.
But! Give Earnestness a chance, too
Now I don't want to overdo it. There are times when you earnestly devote yourself to studying. You are engaged in debates. Let yourself be challenged. Really, I wouldn't have thought that I would have to read so much to become aware that I am more of an average educated person with Klingon attitudes.
Below everything lurks the self-judgement: "You stay below your possibilities. You are undisciplined. You are a wimp."
... Oha, a lot of danger threatens from within. I see great evil coming upon humanity as one turns away from this creepy self-condemnation and blames others for it.
I call it "Trumpification".
A secret, unconscious admiration and acceptance to take oneself out of the human equation. To find a Klingon abbreviation to evade this tenacious consensus-finding, because one does not believe that one can do such a thing. Bad, bad. It is better to take a shortcut and not to be a diplomat in the first place.
Sigh. Laugh.
To find inspiration in the diplomatic service of others is truly something beautiful once one has managed it. But how difficult it is! But not impossible.
Fools we all are on different occasions. Let's have a common laugh about it, shell we? ;-)
It's true. Life is illusion. But of course it is not true.
For when I pinch my arm, I seem to be very real.
If I complain about my pinched arm it's an illusion. Can we agree on that?
Maybe it's a good idea to stroke my arm several times a day and do just that with everything I cling-on myself about that is done to me (No! "by me") through Trumpification.
I go now and finish my origami work.
And later I cook my son a meal. And you?
Have a good day. One advice to go:
Try to fool yourself on purpose at eight o clock in the evening. Than become really mad at yourself.
Maybe you'll find out that you can't. Keep that smile on your face which will get there. Remind you to giggle and the cosmos will giggle back.
Characters above done in powerpoint.
Photograph: Andreas Bauer Origami-Kunst - Eigenes Werk, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1259695