Even though I am one of the people who chose to leave Germany there isn’t an awful lot I actually dislike about living there. If I look back on my life in Germany I basically had everything: a lovely flat with lots of space, my friends and my family close by, a high living standard and you just have to admit that Germany is fairly cheap in general. I even could dance tango almost every night of the week. No, Germany was not my main reason for coming to England, not at all.
There is one thing though that I really dislike about Germany: Germans are complainers. They do an awful lot of talking about things they can’t actually change – or at least things that are out of their reach in their opinion – and they moan and groan and spend an awful lot of time just dwelling on the negative sides of a situation. Of course every one of them thinks if the people who actually have the power to change things would do xyz, everything would be better. We Germans call people like that Stammtischpolitiker which can’t actually be translated literally. A “Stammtisch” is a group of regulars in a pub, so quite loosely translated it would be pub politicians.
English people struck me as being quite the opposite: However hopeless or even dreadful a situation might seem to me, an Englishman will most likely say: “We’re gonna be alright …” or “It’s not too bad, is it?” English people can actually live in the worst situation I could imagine and they still see the positive side. I find both the German and the English attitude towards things quite annoying. I myself haven’t quite figured out why I don’t really have a proper German attitude towards these kind of things – it might have to do with being only half-German. One thing is quite a good guess with me though: I will actually complain as well. What is different about my attitude then? Well, I don’t only complain about things, no I actually go out there and change things if I don’t like them.
Now you might say: “Oh wait, that can’t quite be right. Weren’t we talking about pub politicians and things we can’t really change?” and yes you’re quite right in noticing that. First of all I don’t complain about things I can’t change. I stopped doing that already a long while ago. To come back to the previously mentioned pub politician speak I just stopped being interested in politics entirely after I read Marx and Stirner (if you’re not familiar with him, he was the first ever anarchist). I realized that any fair idea of organizing society is just un-doable due to the human condition. Communism would be a great idea IF AND ONLY IF everyone would be equally interested in the well-being of the entire society and equally educated as well – so would be Anarchism (let’s not get into that discussion) – and so would be democracy. Sadly – even though I might not make too many new friends with statements like these – a large portion of the population is not interested in the well-being of others and also not educated enough to even understand why this is so devastating for everyone. Let’s leave it at saying that any one of those ideologies – be it anarchy, communism or democracy – might work really well with the right population of people involved.
I personally can’t change the organization of our society – so I stopped talking about it. I personally can’t change the human condition (in it’s most general sense) – so I stopped talking about it. What would it help me to complain about the cruelty of mankind, about wars and about us being as savage as 2 million years ago? It wouldn’t change a thing, would it? When I was younger I wasted so much energy on thinking about the right kind of organization for society and on ranting how this system isn’t working that I actually couldn’t even see what is good about our society and what is fair and good about human nature. I just forgot to pay attention to the good things in life!
What I personally see as equally minded is the English opposite: Painting everything in bright happy colours let’s you overlook the things that are actually bad and need to be changed. To take an English example: Let’s say it’s Friday night and you walk through town in a slightly altered state of mind to find a good place where to have your final drinks for today. You walk into a random pub and find that it’s incredibly packed, the music is slightly annoying, the prices insane and the barkeeper an extremely unfriendly bloke, who just spilled half your drink all over the bar. Well, you can stand here at the bar, that’s fine, you’re slightly tipsy and therefore the music is only half as annoying, alcohol is always expensive in this area and the barkeeper just had a bad evening, oh give him a break. “It’s not too bad, is it?” you say to your friends and you stay until final orders. What you didn’t know is that the pub next door even had empty seats, had better music and more reasonable prices and the girl serving the drinks isn’t only nice, but also really attractive! So what went wrong and why do you say to your friends the next morning: “What a shit pub that was yesterday, but well fair enough, we had fun anyway”? Well, because it wasn’t too bad and the pressure wasn’t big enough to just go look somewhere else for a nicer place. You actually missed an opportunity to change your situation, because you didn’t even want to realize that it’s something that could be changed.
Therefore there are at least two ways of sabotaging your happiness with just your point of view: The entirely negative point of view will let you overlook the good aspects of your situation and you will not even be able to see that you might already be quite a happy person. And the entirely positive point of view will let you stay in a bad situation even though you would have the possibility to change it. Instead, try and be realistic for a change! You won’t be able to stop world hunger and create world peace all on your own with some ideas that you came up with in the pub – others already tried and failed! At the same time most of your immediate surroundings can be changed in one way or another: if you don’t like the weather in the country you’re living in, well, then leave the country! You might say now: “Hey, that’s not as easy as you make it out here!”, but you are wrong! Every single day people leave countries and try to have a better life somewhere else. I am the best example, I did this twice.
When I was 17 I moved from East Germany to West Germany – of course there was no wall anymore, but it is still quite a step when you’re 17 and you’re supposed to live on your own and still finish your High School! I left all my friends behind and made some new ones in my new home and I have to say that it was the best decision in my life. The reason why I took such a step is simple: I hated my hometown, because it was just incredibly boring and I connected a lot of bad memories with it.
The second time I moved far away was when I moved from Germany to England last year. I left my flat, my friends and family and a high living standard behind and became a first year student again in a field that is not quite natural to me – Computing. Why would you swap from Media and Cultural Studies and Philosophy to Computing and Artificial Intelligence? Well, I’m fascinated by Complexity Research and AI is basically applied Complexity Research. Furthermore it only takes my interest in the human condition on a new level – trying to create artificial intelligence needs an awful lot of knowledge about the real thing!
When I actually came to England my reasons for coming quickly became obsolete: the relationship which was my primary reason went to pieces and my entire first year of my new degree was spent studying paradigms that I don’t really buy and getting foundations in Computing that I already had before. Additionally I lived in student accommodation, which involved absolutely drunk 18year old girls, people stealing my food and a room about half the size of my living room in my old flat. The prices in England are insane and additionally it seemed quite hard for me to find friends with compatible priorities in life. First year students here drink an awful lot. Additionally good tango dancers seem to be quite rare down in Brighton. Well, that went pretty badly, right? And after all I’m only complaining as well, aren’t I?
Well, no! For every one of these complaints I have a solution at hand. First of all I already moved out of the place with the 18year old girls after one term and started living with mature students – who still stole my food, but were pretty nice and interesting. I managed to make stealing my food hard business so in the last term it actually didn’t really happen anymore. From September 2009 onwards I will be living in a nice post grad house sharing only with two people. I will be living in a rather big room and the house has a nice kitchen, a small living room and even a small garden. It is unlikely that anyone will steal my food in such a small household. Prices will still be quite harsh, but I will have a job in the University and therefore will even be able to afford going to London every second week to dance tango. The curriculum for the next year at uni is much more interesting for me and I will have my own projects to keep me busy as well. After one year I actually also found a good number of people who share my interests and priorities, and I intend to even meet more people through some other activities as soon as I’m back in Brighton.
All in all I realistically evaluated my situation and only with this evaluation I could then go and find a solution for all my problems. If I had ignored that I was in fact deeply unhappy where I was, there would be no change now and I would still be in the same bad situation as I was before. While my bitterness would have grown over time I would have even become more unhappy the longer I would have been forced to subconsciously deal with these problems on a regular basis.
If I can’t only leave the country as I please and make numerous changes to my life after that, where do you think is the limit? The limit is only set by what you yourself think is possible. If I think that I can’t get a first class degree in Computing, I actually won’t get it, because I won’t try. If I realistically think that it is possible, I will achieve my goal as long as I work hard for it. If I think I can’t possibly just leave for a year to go to Argentina, well, then I can’t go, can I? If I think it is possible I will save money to fulfill this dream until it is possible (there are about 5000 EUR to go). What I am saying is: You create your own life!
Last week Jon Timmis, Professor of Natural Computation at the University of York, said in a talk that if you don’t like what you’re doing, “you should just stop doing it, really!” and I think he is right. In the last 7 years I told a very similar thing to everyone in my environment who complained about something: “If you don’t like it, then change it! It’s as simple as that!”
Start evaluating your situation realistically from today and you will see that ideas for change are cheap and mostly easy to implement. If you don’t like your house or neighbourhood, move to another one! If you don’t like your job, find a job that you like! If you feel lonely then go out there and meet some new people! Stop sabotaging your own happiness and start living the life you actually want to live! selfdev. can help you if you don’t know how.
