The last 2 months I was living with an extraordinary English flatmate. Most English people I met so far are not really interested in the fate of their country or their society as long as it doesn’t concern their own well-being. International students usually joke that everything is fine in England as long as the pubs are open. Expect riots if they close them though! My flatmate is different: He complains.
The two of us were working in the same office and therefore we usually went to have lunch at home together. The college where we are staying at the moment is about 10-15 minutes from our office and we usually talk about something while walking home. We both are people, who are interested in what goes on in our society, so every day we would end up talking about the pensions not being safe, about English bureaucracy or maybe about environmental issues. In two months we never ran out of things to discuss, because we care. In fact I found these conversations to be refreshing, because an English complainer is a somewhat new phenomenon to me and I only know the attitude of German complainers – they actually do complain a lot, mostly about things they cannot control.
I have to admit that I used these last 2 months for a little research of my own, well, let’s call it a little self experiment: For one month I kept a little promise to myself that I would not complain about anything. I allowed myself to give statements about the situation, but emotional involvement was not allowed. This means that I could say “The kitchen is a mess”, but I couldn’t say “I hate that the kitchen is a mess”. I wanted to find out what it meant to not complain about things, to not care about these things that usually annoy me a lot.
For this one month my situation was exactly the same as it was in the month where I was allowed to complain. The kitchen almost always was a mess, the cleaners were always slamming the door early in the morning and the weather was consistently bad. Of course this is not a proper scientific experiment though, but just a little introspection of how I felt while I was complaining and while I was not complaining.
In the month when I was allowed to complain I had quite some rants about the cleaners who always slam the door at 7 am in the morning. I spent quite some time being angry. It stressed me out and it gave my day not only a bad start, but it stayed bad, because I spent so much time thinking about something that is negative. At lunch time my flatmate and me would have our daily rant about “stupid society” and later on I would be annoyed that the kitchen was dirty and that my spoon disappeared. I would be annoyed at the uncomfortable chair in my room and the old mattress. The fan of the bathroom next door would drive me mad at 1 am. The list goes on. My day was basically filled with episodes of anger and discomfort and I didn’t enjoy my time that much.
In the month when I was not supposed to complain I found that I felt completely different about the same living situation. While I was basically still complaining in the sense that I stated the obvious “I’m tired, because the cleaner slammed the door at 7 in the morning” I tried to not feel anything about it. It was a fact like “The sky is blue” or “It is 2pm”: Nothing to be upset about. Instead of being annoyed that someone woke me up and to complain about something that already happened and that I now cannot change anymore I treated it as something that you cannot really be upset about. Kind of like gravity.
Nobody is angry about the laws of physics even though gravity might have annoying consequences sometimes! The state pensions might not be safe, but that’s why I have a private pension fund (which gives me a false sense of safety my brother would say). The kitchen might be dirty, but I will only stay here for another week. I turned the fan in the bathroom off and told people I would be really upset with them if they turned it on at night time. If there’s gravity, well, we deal with it: We try to not jump off buildings (usually) and try to not drop technology! If we do then we accept that it’s our own mistake: We do not blame gravity!
In the month where I was not supposed to complain I felt a lot better. I didn’t always succeed in not complaining. It’s a tough job if you complained all your life. Usually I managed though! It made me feel a lot more calm and content. Of course I wasn’t happy about the dirty kitchen or the loud cleaners, but I didn’t dwell on these mere facts that I couldn’t change. I didn’t let these things ruin a potential for being in a good mood.
Try it: Stop complaining about gravity!
What are the things you usually complain about? Have you found a healthy positive way of complaining? Let me know in through your comments!
Last Friday I held a talk at the University of York about the project I was doing all summer. The project was part of a scholarship programme that is supposed to show young students what research is all about. We were quite a variety of people. Some of us already finished their third year and are about to proceed with their Masters and one of us only just finished her A-Levels and is about to start at Cambridge. As it is common with scholarships around here half of us were from Ox-bridge and I’m not quite sure how competitive the application process really was. I only know that my academic advisor at the University of Sussex was completely convinced that I had no chance whatsoever of getting the scholarship when I applied. He told me that and I found him quite discouraging. A similar thing happened when I was having a chat with him about switching to the Master programme now instead of continuing with the undergraduate degree. He told me that I might not be happy about what I would be doing there and that I might find it too hard. He openly told me to stick with what I’ve got and be patient for it to become better. Being bored should hardly be the reason to take up something that you possibly can’t tackle.
Now, why did I feel so disheartened by his advice and why did it make me feel even worse about my situation? I went to him, because I didn’t only feel bored. No, I was generally disappointed with my situation. I came to England for a man and I had an excuse. I wanted to know how to create AI programs. I wanted to know how to program a robot. I wanted to know how to build a robot. Considering that I already had 1 1/2 degrees and a first in both it was very obvious that my sudden change in subject was … a matter of not knowing what I really wanted to do. In fact anything would have been fine if it would have involved coming to England and being with that man. And there I was. The relationship was going badly and I realized that I wasn’t happy with anything else. My degree was boring, because it wasn’t remotely challenging, my living situation was horrible – at that time I was living with 18 year old first year girls and I couldn’t stand the constant noise and silliness – I was ill most of the time and I was sad, because I wanted to go home. When I went to my academic advisor I felt so lost and I needed someone to listen to my miserable situation. I needed someone to tell me “It’s gonna be alright, you just need something challenging to do and you’re gonna be happy again”.
And what did that mean guy do? He told me, that this wouldn’t make me happy either! I didn’t speak about any personal details, so it was merely a matter of his confidence in me. He knew my record, he knew my marks and still he told me, that I couldn’t do it. And what if I really couldn’t do it? What if I would get bad marks in a Masters programme? What if I’d be too unprepared for a Master degree right now? Well, then I would at least have tried to improve my situation. I would have made a change. In retrospect I think I made some really bad calls in this year. The first bad call was coming to England in the first place. The second one was starting an Undergraduate degree instead of a Masters and the third one was not trusting myself to be good enough, because of some guy who doesn’t even know me.
When I came to York I was afraid that I couldn’t do it. I actually struggled a lot for the first few weeks and I was pretty stuck. And then … my hard work paid off. I managed to achieve the goal of the project in 8 weeks instead of 10 and now I’m spending the last two weeks doing some cool stuff with real robots instead of simulated ones. I impressed some people with my talk and in fact I’m even writing a paper about my work here and we will submit it to a workshop. It might even become my first publication! This guy thought I wouldn’t even get the placement and now I’m actually really successful with it!
All this taught me something: The biggest mistake is to not have any trust in your own abilities.
Within only one year I have gained enough skills and knowledge to not only be one of the best students in my year, but also to successfully complete a research project with only a bit of guidance by my supervisor. We were both happy with quite a free working environment: He let me go my way, explore my ideas and he always let me do the work. He never told me how to do stuff, but only explored options together with me. It worked out very well and I enjoyed it a lot to work together with him.
If I can successfully complete this project, which was explicitly stated as a project for master students, why shouldn’t I be able to do a Masters? Why should I be afraid of bigger coursework projects? I didn’t believe in myself and with that I made my life much more complicated than it could have been. Worrying about the future and about your abilities will make you stop yourself from trying. Trying and failing is much better than never trying at all!
For the past few year I always said “I can do what I want, if I really want it!”, but somehow I failed to believe myself! I was afraid that I couldn’t live up to the high standards I set for myself. I sabotaged myself with that fear without realizing it. It weren’t the high standards that sabotaged me, no, it was my own wrong assessment of my own abilities.
There is no “I can’t”! You can, if you believe in yourself and work hard for it!
The last 5 months I’ve been single and I actually don’t mind being single at all. Before I found out how to be single and happy I was never alone for a very long time. I just couldn’t manage to be alone! I would become depressed and I would try to hold on to some random person when I just couldn’t bear the solitude anymore. I was never very strong in that sense. And I was never very happy either, because I usually ended up with a rather random partner. Don’t get me wrong, I loved and that’s the reason why I was together with them, but I never gave any consideration to how things could work out in the real world. How could a relationship work, if I clearly wasn’t over my last relationship? How would the relationship survive the long distance between us? How? I always thought “love will sort it out”.
For my last partner I actually moved to a country that I didn’t like very much in the first place and of course it went all wrong, because I gave up too much for him and he wasn’t ready for this kind of commitment. The last 5 months were generally quite good. Being single is not too bad at all. Still, there were sad moments, where I missed him and where I didn’t know how I would ever find anyone like him again (well, a little bit more mature would be nice). I didn’t really want to accept the reality of things: I made a mistake in coming to England because of a guy. I made a mistake in trusting solely in love. The real world just doesn’t work like that. We’re so full of illusions when it comes to love and relationships, because we’re looking for the fluffy Hollywood love! Think about those Hollywood films: The film ends when the two finally kiss and then they live happily ever after, right? Well, no, the first kiss and the first few months are always easy and rosé and fluffy and then reality kicks in! Hollywood love leads to hollywood divorce and that’s that.
How do we make a long distance relationship work? How do we cope with an immature partner who loves us dearly, but with whom it is impossible to have children, because he’s still a kid himself? How do we make it work in the real world? Well, sometimes it just doesn’t work out! You realize that he’s too immature, that the distance is too big and that you just can’t deal with it. For me it didn’t have anything to do with love. I didn’t suddenly stop loving. I didn’t suddenly stop having fantasies about a future with him. Nothing changed where feelings were concerned. At some point I just couldn’t bear the constant fighting anymore. He made me too angry. He hurt me too much. Enough was enough! And still, after a while the anger goes away and what do you do then? You think of him and you just feel: ouch, you still love him so much and still can’t be together with him! Frustration, anger that you didn’t see it coming, well, lately the most frequent thought was, that I was stupid! So stupid to believe that everything would just work out, because we love each other.
Somehow I ended up still hoping that everything would work out! One day he would just wake up and be grown up enough to stop the bullshit. I hoped that losing me would drive him to grow up faster. In the last 5 months nothing of this sort happened. In fact my hope kept me where I was. Sure, I’m single, I’m quite happy with it and I’m not even looking for a new partner. Well, I don’t need one, because one day he will grow up, right? Only recently I realized that I wasn’t moving on. I wasn’t going to let go of him. I still wanted it to work, because I placed so much hope in him. I came to another country for that guy and now everything is supposed to be gone? No way!
The last time we spoke about it he said that he moved on. He still seems to be single, but he seems to know now that it won’t work out with the two of us. He would be too afraid that we would have the same problems again. He moved on. And I didn’t. I still sit here thinking: “Wait a minute, we love each other, why doesn’t it work?!”
Am I immature for having hope? Am I stupid for doing what my heart tells me to do? Am I silly for still wondering why it didn’t work out? No. Everyone needs hope and doing what your heart tells you to do is probably the only way to actually find happiness out there. I would even say it is normal that I didn’t move on yet, because he was important enough for me to move to a country that I didn’t really like in the first place!
Of course I am moving on. I know that it won’t work out. I know that my hope is futile. I know that he’s not ready for what I need in a relationship. I just didn’t want to let go yet! I could let go any moment now and it would be ok. I mourned enough, I suffered enough, I reasoned enough and I certainly waited long enough. It is time to let go and I know it.
Everyone needs time to move on and you should give yourself this time. If you just throw yourself into the next relationship you will still struggle in the same way, but you won’t do it consciously. It will be unfair and cruel for yourself and for your new partner.
Everyone needs to suffer through a loss. Your dreams were shattered, your future ripped apart, it is normal that moving on hurts! In the end: if it doesn’t hurt, then the relationship was just a waste of your energy!
It is normal that you don’t want to let go, because this person had such an importance in your life. Letting go sometimes feels like betrayal. If you still love this person, why would you let go just because reality caught up with you? It seems wrong.
You will know when it’s time to let go. When you suffered enough, when you had enough time to think, when it doesn’t feel like betrayal anymore, then you will know that it’s time to let go.
For me it is time. Know when it’s time for you!
My favourite tango couple are Javier Rodriguez and Geraldine Rojas. They were truly amazing together (for more videos of them together click here). For both there came the time when they had to move on.
This tango video shows Javier Rodriguez with his new partner Andrea Misse.
The following video shows Geraldine Rojas with her new partner Ezequiel Paludi.
Verena Fischer is a Media and Cultural Studies graduate, who is currently studying Computing and Artificial Intelligence at the University of Sussex, Brighton, UK, while working part-time as a Peer Assisted Learning Leader and Blog-Author.
She is interested in everything that has to do with robotics and AI – be it medial representation, philosophy or actual engineering -, self development, life hacking and tango argentino.
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