I vaguely remembered a few scenes of Starship Troopers. I probably saw parts of it on TV, but never the whole movie. I finally watched it the other day. At some point, the main character is in a military camp. The movie makes fun of all the military stereotypes, and even includes a so-called washout lane. It is an exit for the ones who give up and go back home, ashamed of not being good enough. Of being weak. Of being a failure. Beyond the satire, the concept gave me an unexpected warm-hearted feeling. We should all have the right to fail. To go home. To withdraw to a safe place. I am fortunate to have a life where the chance of physical danger is low. Still, I crave for the idea of a washout lane. Too often, the military camp is not our environment or the people who surround us, but our own mind. That is great news because it means that it is in our hands to reshape that camp to a garden that allows us to learn and flourish, without the need for a safety exit.

Life should not require one of these

The theory sounds wonderful. Traveling overnight. Board a train, bus, or plane in the late evening and arrive fresh and renewed on the next morning to the destination. I fall for this every single time. And apparently, I am not the only one. I thought I would be almost alone on that train departing at half past three in the morning, but I barely could find a seat. Families. Elderly people. Hugging couples. The station was as busy as any other time of the day. Finally I found a spot among crying babies, sleep-masked travellers, and yoginis on the impossible quest to find the right sleeping posture on a train seat. I managed to catch some rest with the expected interruptions every few minutes, entirely unaware that I would enjoy a week-long stiff neck as a bonus. But no matter how many overnight trains, buses, or planes I take, for some inexplicable reason I still do not feel the motivation to get a neck pillow. Nor to give up on the delusion of restful overnight trips.

As early as 10:30 in the morning, I arrived "fresh and renewed" in the city of love

I love the rain. Finally a break. A true relief. Now I can stay at home without feeling guilty. The sun is out, how come you’re not enjoying it? In a region where summer means an endless sequence of sticky days and heavy thunderstorms, sun on a weekend day is like a lottery jackpot. You should go out. You must go out! On that one day where one could finally sleep long and get all the urgent house work done, that damn blue sky and unbearable bright sun feed my remorse. All these people going on hikes and crowding the outdoor seats of the restaurants make me feel even more guilty. You are missing out on the summer! The problem is that the summer is too nice here. It is warm enough to enjoy the great outdoors yet not hot enough for a heatstroke. The pressure to enjoy that is enormous. Rain is the only way out. And when will it rain again? On the exact same moment that I am done with the housework and I get on the bike to go somewhere.

In summer nights, I light this candle that magically stops time while I sit on the balcony

I try to sleep about eight hours every day because I dislike feeling tired, but I have to admit that the dreamy, headache-prone state after a short night also comes with some advantages. The mind is too tired to think. Most importantly, it is too tired to overthink. Anxiety costs energy. If one barely has enough energy to move, anxiety becomes an unaffordable luxury. Too tired to worry. Too tired to consider all possible outcomes. Too tired to make one's own life more difficult than it needs to be. And, unfortunately, too tired to fully enjoy the benefits of that state. Lack of sleep is certainly not the way to get there, but it offers a preview of a life without all the self-imposed stress. I believe meditation can help to get there in a more sustainable way. Lately, my meditation practice is at a minimum. On many days, it is just one minute. But that one minute feels like a tremendous relief. Almost everything can wait for one minute. That one minute is mine, and only mine, to truly do nothing.

I should learn from this cat. It stayed in that pot all day doing nothing, and no problem.

So far, I am lucky to never have had a bad experience on a plane. I like flying. I like the views out of the window. I like realizing that I am safely sitting thousands of meters above the ground. But what I like the most is flight mode. Not just on the phone, but also in the sense of disconnection. No tasks. No to-do lists. Nothing. It all has to wait because I am literally crammed into an airplane seat and anything other than reading a book or watching a movie is just not feasible. For the duration of the flight, life is on pause. And that is wonderful. Down on the ground, I fall back to a priority-based existence like I guess most of us. A life in which something needs to be top priority among all other urgent tasks to ever be done.

Rain pours on Munich in the background after take off from runway 26L

First times get all the attention. First time swimming. First time riding a bike. First time flying. A mix of excitement and fear for a new experience. But we almost never notice last times. The last time hiking a beautiful scenery. The last time talking to a friend. The last time hugging a loved one. Most last times are sad as they mark the end to a phase. The phase may have been better or worse, but it has shaped our life. So did my little appartment in Munich, which I had to vacate due to personal needs of the owner. As I emptied the 40 m2 that had been my home for almost six years, I remembered the feeling when I first moved in. It was a time of excitement for a new start full of opportunities. I had tons of plans and ideas of all the things I wanted to do. Everything seemed possible.

I passed the door so often, yet I had never actually looked at it

As I looked back one last time to the empty appartment, I realised how little of all of that I had actually done. I left behind the place that had stood for all my aspirations. Minimalism. Zero waste. Meditation. Design. All those things. I closed the door, walked down the stairs for the last time, and thanked that place for the dreams it helped make a reality.

The stewardess picked the passengers with trolleys on the jet bridge and asked them to wait aside to check in their luggage due to lack of space. The group of friends in front of me had to follow her. All except one of them, who just had a large but flexible backpack. She looked back to her friends who were now separated from her. Her face expression revealed curiosity but also some form of slight fear. Her group, the people she cared about, the ones who cared about her, were somewhere else. She looked back frequently to check on them, to check when they would come. Even if modern societies have made it possible to survive as an individual, it just means that our support network has become anonymous in form of a state that provides the context we need to survive. But in reality, humans only succeed by working together, as books about humankind explain. The life of a lone wolf, albeit attractive, is inevitably short and painful.

Eventually, she moved out of the line on the jet bridge, and went back to her friends.

Planes are surprising social environments. I enjoyed watching Hijack on such a flight.

As a kid, I read up to the fourth Harry Potter book. I recall that I enjoyed the books very much, but for some reason I did not continue. I guess that I got anxious about exams and homework and all the other allegedly important things at school, leaving no time to read. At some point, the movies came out, and I recall that some classmates watched them. But I never managed to be part of that and so I never watched the movies. And now, more than ten years later, for an unexpected reason, I watched them all in one shot. If one buys the scenario, they are fun and entertaining, offer a lot of action and adventures, and an amazing big finale. But then there is the ending after the ending. The screen turns black and shows the main characters about twenty years later. And that short final scene bugged me. It bugged me surprisingly much.

Books, movies, merchandise... and amusement parks all over the world

The films depict a coming of age story. The characters grow over time and learn from their mistakes, from the first to the last movie. Everything is new, everything is exciting. The characters admit that they do not know what they are doing, but that they are trying their best. And after seven great movies, that last scene brings across a devastating message. The characters became old and settled down. Now they know everything. Now they can teach their own children. It conveys the idea that, once one becomes an adult, everything is under control. That is a huge lie. As adults, we are nothing but teenagers who have learned to pretend that we have an answer for everything. That we are stable. That we know who we are. The scariest part of it is that it is incredibly tempting and comforting to actually believe that. Not only scary, but also sad. If one believes to know everything, one will never learn anything new.

The plane took off surprisingly on time. We headed north, straight towards Iceland and Greenland. As expected in early January, the sun set about one hour after take off. But the dim orange glow on the horizon never vanished. We chased the sunset at 875 kilometers per hour all the way into Canada and beyond. The longest sunset I have ever seen, slowly moving from the left side to the right side of the plane. The tail camera of the elegant A350 D-AIXP showed the plane bathed in what seemed an eternal golden glow. And for a moment, as the cabin lights were dimmed and most passengers deep asleep, the -55 degrees outside temperature seemed to have frozen time at 12192 meters of altitude.

The eternal sunset as seen from the tail camera

The key to feeling better is to give up. At least on all of the irrelevant stuff, which is most of what keeps our minds busy. This is the most valuable insight that I got from 2023. And as usual, the best insight came from the most mundane situation. Trying to fall asleep at night. The mind can find endless reasons to not fall asleep. A tiny bit of light. The sound of a drop in the kitchen sink. The neighbours making noise. You name it. When that happens, just give up. So simple, yet so difficult for some unexplainable reason. Of course, I am not the first one to realise this. Tons of sleep meditations ask the listener over and over to surrender. The beauty of it is that it works for everything else, too. Deep in our minds is an understanding of what we believe is right and we fight anxiously to make it a reality. Yet in doing so, we exclude the possibility of anything else being right and, most importantly, we suffer needlessly for all the things we cannot change. In 2024, choose surrender.

When the mind looks like this, just give up (photographed at Lenbachhaus)