Lone Wolf

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.

The Final Scene

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.

Chasing the Sunset

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

Surrender

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)

Aura

Life is somehow divided into epochs with fuzzy boundaries and their own aura. Epochs arise and fade away unnoticed, but when I later come across a picture, a song, a taste, a smell, or any feeling from that time, its unique aura arises and evokes a kind of nostalgy. I wonder what defines an epoch. The time of the year, the weather, the mix of feelings in my mind, the people around me. All of it together somehow stands for that time. The aura is a sort of hash value of a given moment. It is the key to travel back to an epoch and feel again how it was to be alive at that instant. Hence the obsession to take pictures and videos of every single moment, wanting to take with us to the future what we cannot. I do that as well. Thousands and thousands of records of everything to cling to past moments that shall not be lost in time. Yet the mind is lossy and no amount of redundant backups can prevent all of it to be gone at some point. Forever and ever.

If a memory shall last for eternity, make it out of stone, not out of bits and bytes

Oktoberfest

I do not drink alcohol, but I enjoy the culture around it. That culture ends rapidly when people drink too much and the Oktoberfest is unfortunately famous for exactly that. Keeping a balance is difficult, and the more alcohol, the harder it seems to be to not fall for the extreme. It is sad that this questionable reputation overshadows the nice parts of the event. I cannot blame anyone for it, since I am also on an extreme by not drinking at all. Rather than complaining, this year I wanted to get a bird's-eye view of the event. The tower of the Saint Paul church is right next to the Theresienwiese and offers exactly that. The viewing platform is open exclusively during the Oktoberfest and thus I did not want to miss the opportunity. The weather was nice and the queue inexistent on a Monday morning, but I underestimated by far the 97 meters height of the tower. At the top, the drunk and the noise were far, leaving me to a peaceful view of the largest beer festival on earth.

I did not manage to ride the flying swings this year

Symmetric view to the west

The stairs of the tower offer unusual views of the church interior

I regretted not bringing a camera with proper telephoto lenses

In 1960, a C-131D airplane coming from this direction hit the tower and crashed

Mind the gap

The mind is an expert at filling gaps. It has to, because our perception is full of them. In the present, because we are only aware of an infinitesimal fraction of what is happening. In the past, because we love forgetting about the details that do not fit our world view. And in the future, because the future is a single enormous gap. This is where it gets really bad. Instead of meaningful statistics, the mind loves heavily biased intuitions about what may happen next. Like when one is stuck in traffic. Or on a broken train. Or on a grounded airplane. This will never end. I will be hopelessly late. I will be here forever. The mind extrapolates the current situation to the future. The more catastrophic, the better. It typically disregards that something may change because change is unknown and makes it harder to fill the gaps. But change is fundamental. And it is good. Human existence is all about learning, and change is the best teacher. Mind the gap, and fill it with change.

The famous London Tube warning, sometime back in 2006

Almost

No matter how much I plan a trip, sometimes I miss one of the must-see places by very little. I check ticket availability too late. I queue at the wrong place. I do not research enough about all available options. How come you visited X and did not see Y? A feeling of frustration comes up. And of wanting to make possible the impossible. What if I wake up very early tomorrow morning and still find a way to go? I frenetically check schedules. Departure times. Distances. All that just makes it worse. This irrelevant first world problem is however a great training for the things that actually matter. The times when we want something important to be in one way but it turns out different. The mental muscle that allows one to let go of that must-see place is the same that later helps letting go of fear, loss, and pain. The moment one manages to be at ease with what is, instead of obsessing about what could have been, is wonderful. Better train that muscle with simple problems.

Sigiriya Rock. We queued at the entrance that included some frescoes we could have skipped. The intense heat and the huge crowd forced us to give up on reaching the top.

Caves in the Gulf of Orosei. I assumed that all boat tours stopped at these caves which are only accesible by boat. It turns out that only some of them do.

Château d'If. I verified that tickets for this castle on an island were available. What did not come to my mind is that the boat that takes one there sells out fast.

Watchless

I have to admit that smart watches are useful. They are great to soothe anxiety. I can quickly check that no one called. That no message is waiting for a reply. That no email is left unseen. And most importantly, smart watches also show the time. Not just any time, but the reference time from the worldwide synchronized time network. A quick glance at the watch appeases all fears and worries. I am on time for the meeting. For the train. For the flight. A smart watch is the ultimate tool to anxiously confirm and reconfirm that all is good. That all is on schedule. That all is under control. But the other day, it ran out of battery. And what seemed like a catastrophic event, actually felt like an incredible relief. I felt at ease not knowing the exact time. Sure, knowing is important sometimes, but not all the time. As with everything, balance is the key. Not too much, not too little. Unfortunately, lately the trend seems to be to fall for the extremes. In daily life. In politics. In everything.

Paradoxically, timeless sunsets require precise timing to not miss them

Enough

I felt the addiction. It was not extreme. But it was there. I spent about 20 to 30 minutes every day browsing Instagram, even though I had a full schedule. It was procrastination. A way to delay the next task, wanting to believe that it was not there. But of course, the task would come back and cost me double the effort. It was a bad habit. It provided me instant gratification, but made me feel bad in the long term. I remembered a technique that I learned from meditation. I never thought that it would work. It is so simple, that it can be boiled down to one word. Enough. The key is to shift the focus from the ephemeral gratification to the subsequent hangover feeling. Once the mind is there, changing the habit is effortless because one does not want it anymore. And to my surprise, it worked. It is widely applicable. Junk food. Doomscrolling. Procrastinating. Being a couch potato. You name it. Once one becomes aware, bad habits just vanish in thin air.

And saving twenty minutes every day, one ends up with time for a day trip :-)