Setting Priorities...

It’s about 2 AM where I live and after having worked on writing a paper for university all day (more or less), I decided to go to sleep. Well, I couldn’t fall asleep with all those things I have yet to do going on in my mind, so I got up again. I don’t even know where to start, should I finish my paper, should I finally work on my application for my semester abroad, should I catch up on all the Chinese vocabulary or should I try to study for that math test that I will most likely fail if I don’t start understanding anything very soon. Or should I prepare that presentation that needs to be done for the next week? And what about the nine other exams I have to study for? (And this is only concerning university, my life happens to consist of other things too.) I wanted to get all these things done during Christmas holiday. There are only two days left. You see, there  is not much time left to work on my blog, actually the days are way too short to get at least some of these things done, especially because after the holidays I am at university for about 12 hours almost every day again, so there is not much time to catch up on all these things anyway. 

That’s why I decided that I eventually have to set priorities if I want to pass any of my exams and go on that semester abroad (which I really, really want to, I have been looking forward to this for a long time). 
So, I am sorry to announce this, but I will be on a temporary hiatus for some weeks. 

As I don’t want to give up blogging permanently, however, I consider this as a break and will return when my exams for this semester are done, that is probably at the middle or the end of February.

I will still be around to continue commenting on my favourite blogs when taking a break from studying, but there won’t be enough time to write any articles. Actually I even have some ideas, I just wish I also had the time to get them written down. Of course I could do that quickly, but if I wrote them while being stressed like this, they would be really bad, I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on writing them.

I also wanted to use this opportunity to thank all of you people that continued to come back here and all of you who have left their comments, I truly appreciate every one of them. Thank you for the support and for your wonderful opinions on whatever I decided to write.

So, I’ll probably be back in about six weeks (that’s actually not that long) with new posts and I would love if you too returned to read them. I hope you have a great time with whatever you are doing for the next weeks.

New Year Resolutions and Past Mistakes

As the New Year is approaching, most people have their New Year resolutions. I never really have any because I know I wouldn’t keep them if I just made them up for the New Year.

At this time of the year, people start thinking about their mistakes and what they want to change for the coming year. It is said that to err is human, which it certainly is, and that it is necessary and good because that way we learn from our mistakes and know how to do it right the next time.

While I do think this makes sense, I can’t help but wonder whether we really learn from our mistakes. Don’t we make the same mistakes over and over again sometimes?

I have to confess, there is one thing I always do and I know I do it wrong. I am really bad at organizing, I am just not that structured. Every year in school I made the same mistakes again. Instead of being prepared for the exams and studying in time, in order not to have too much stress later on, I always began studying very shortly before the exams, to be more precisely, the day before they took place. Or, as my father would call it, I just lived for the moment. In school this worked for me but at university there is so much more to do and it is not as easy as school. Last semester at university was the first time I did actually learn from my past mistakes and tried to avoid that stress. I managed to be prepared for the exams and it worked really well. I have never had bad grades but this time they were actually great. Unfortunately, the current semester seems to be different again. I know what my mistake is and yet it has always been hard to change it.

And think of all the New Year resolutions people have. I bet there are thousands of people who now have the exact same resolutions they had last year and the year before and yet they don't manage to abide by them and make the same mistakes every year.

Furthermore, just look at history. Sometimes it seems like we repeat all our previous mistakes, considering all the wars or any situation where people just strive for power regardless of the results and of how insane it might be.
Unfortunately, it seems like it always takes the worst outcome to make us finally change things.
Isn’t there a saying that defines insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results?

So what does it take for us to learn from our mistakes? Do we actually really learn from them at all?

Maybe we don’t learn from history but only from our own mistakes.

As for me, I am now starting to write a paper for university, I don’t want to save it for the very last day, after all. My excuse for writing this post instead of working on my paper right now is that it has to be written in English, so this was really just a quick warm-up, of course.

 Whether or not you learned from your past mistakes, I hope your wishes for the next year come true. I wish all of you a Happy New Year!

A trip down memory lane

I am sorry for having skipped last week’s post, I usually try to write an article every week, but this week was different. The reason is that I have to live with my family for about two weeks. Initially I thought I could just come over for Christmas and then leave again but, due to reasons that are too complex to explain here, I have to stay longer. Those of you who have been reading my posts regularly probably know a bit about the situation between my family and me, although I didn’t tell all the details. So, because of the prospect of having to stay there, I couldn’t really concentrate on writing.

Did you ever go on a trip into your past? Was it voluntarily or were you thrown into it? What were your feelings connected to it?

Or are you able to live completely in the present and never look back? I’d like to say that I do, I usually try, and I did make peace with the fact that I will never have a good relationship with my family, my mother and my brother in particular. I just decided to live my own life. I think it is good and even necessary to let the past go. But there are moments that throw me back. Lately some people keep telling me they think I am strong, but especially in these moments I am not at all. Whenever I visit my family everything changes, mainly because nothing has really changed. I hope this doesn’t sound too confusing.

Did you ever look back and realized how good it is that past is over? This is what happens to me every time I visit my family. To be honest, I hate it. Nothing feels worse than stepping over the threshold of the entry door, every time I just want to turn around and run away. I hate sleeping in my old room, in my old bed, there are too many memories. I feel anything but free when being here. This is what describes it best, this feeling of being somehow trapped. It feels like there is something pressing my chest, not letting me breathe. I wish I could say that I can forget and forgive, but every time I’m here I realize that I can’t entirely. I couldn’t sleep for two weeks before going here and when I just thought of it I felt literally sick. I won’t stay any longer than necessary.

However, I am trying to see the positive side, which is that I don’t have to live here constantly anymore. Besides, I am really looking forward to a little Christmas party I am having later in the evening with a few old friends of mine. This is the other side of my journey into the past, I really missed those friends. We went to the same school but afterwards we all chose a different university, plus I moved away for my studies, so we don’t see each other very often now. Nevertheless, when we meet, it is like nothing ever changed and we’re best friends again. So, visiting my home town really is like a trip into the past, it seems like nothing ever changes here. I like to think that by moving away I escaped this state of not being able to move forward.

Anyway, next week’s post is going to be more like my usual ones again.

I hope you all get to spend Christmas with your loved ones. Merry Christmas, or, if you don’t celebrate Christmas, just have a great time.

How much ambition is really necessary?

Sometimes people tell me I have to be more ambitious. But do I really always have to be best at everything?

It seems like society sees it as a sin if you don’t seize every opportunity you have, even if it concerns something that is not really important. Is it a sin to waste your talent, for example?

Are you not allowed to be happy unless you achieve more and more?

How ambitious does one really have to be? And how much ambition is too much? Can there ever be too much of it, in your opinion? I would definitely have to answer in the affirmative.

I can be pretty determined if I really want something and I do have dreams and aims in life. But this doesn’t relate to every activity in my life, I don’t feel the need to be more ambitious about certain things.

For instance, I have been doing judo for quite some time now, although I don’t do much lately, actually hardly any at all. Anyway, over the years, I participated in several competitions and I was somewhat successful, for my standards. However, I have always only done it as a hobby and refused every offer to go to a special school that would focus more on sports. Also, I didn’t want to practice every day or go to another more promising and successful club than the one in my town.
As a consequence, some people told me I’d wasted my talent. But have I really? I had a dream, I aimed to take part in the national championship just for once. When I qualified for it a few years ago, it was quite a big success for me. However, I have accomplished my goal, so afterwards I honestly lacked any ambition to achieve more than that.  And why do people think I should want that? Maybe I could have achieved more, but I never wanted to live for it and I knew that I would never be good enough to be really successful. I have always been told that I need to be more aggressive and more ambitious, but that’s just not how I am and I am not going to change with regard to this. So why waste my time, given that I want something else in life?

Moreover, my priorities have changed, they became simpler and more difficult at the same time. Although I still love doing judo just for fun, I don’t care about how successful I am concerning sports, I’d rather like to finish my studies, find a job, travel, have my own little family one day, just be happy. And if I know that living for a sport won't make me happy, I won't do it.

Is it really necessary to be ambitious in every area of life? Does it make you more successful, happier?

Is ambition the key to success? But what if you don’t want that success? What if you’re content with what you have already achieved?

Do you consider it as a waste not to seize every opportunity you have? Does it make a difference for you whether it is about a hobby or a job, for example?

I am not saying that having ambitions is bad. When I really want something, I fight for it, I don’t give up and I do everything I can to get where I want to be. But there are things I just don’t need to accomplish.

Besides, in my opinion, too much ambition can become harmful when it turns into an obsession.

I am British and Germans are Nazis...?

Of course I am not, but I would love to be British. I attended this seminar about cultural differences at the weekend which was held by a British woman who came to Germany in her thirties. She talked a lot about British and German values and the differences she noticed between British and German people. Of course you can’t say “the British” or “the Germans”, of course this is much more differentiated. But I do believe that there are certain tendencies and that some values might be more important in some cultures than they are in others.
I noticed that in a lot of areas I am more British than German.

Moreover, I am currently planning my semester abroad which will take place in less than a year and I desperately want to go to Great Britain. Unfortunately, my university has only three partner universities in the UK and there are about 500 people applying each semester and only two are chosen for each university (at least if you want to go as a Erasmus student, in that case you don’t have to pay the tuition). The reason why there are only two students to be chosen is because this is based on an agreement between the German and British universities and apparently no one wants to go to Germany. This does not only concern Great Britain but also France, for example. I can understand this somehow, if I could choose, I wouldn’t choose Germany either. Actually I would love to move to England someday in the future.

Anyway, I am really curious, how much do people (non-Germans) learn about German history? And how much do you know about Germany as it is today? What do you think about Germans (please be honest)?

This woman also talked a lot about stereotypes and told us about some of her experiences and asked us about ours. A lot of the other students told stories about how people asked them about Hitler when they were abroad and how a lot of people think of Germans as Nazis. In fact, one student had been asked (not by a Briton though) what Hitler does today. I am always quite shocked to hear that a lot of people don’t really know a lot about this and that they really associate Germany with nothing else but Hitler. Admittedly, I am not very patriotic, however Germany today is not Germany 70 years ago.

Also, as a German, it is quite unthinkable to not know about German past and you can’t imagine that other people don’t learn about it. Of course, history is inerasable, therefore we learn really a lot about it at school, mainly to prevent that such a thing can happen again. It is almost awkward to admit to be German.

Again, people shouldn’t forget about this time in history, in contrary, they should learn about it (and Germans do but I don’t know how this is in other countries) but I also think that it is important to know that it is past.

So, when you hear Germany, do you really immediately think of WWII and/or Hitler? Do you learn a lot about it at school? Do you associate Germany with anything else that doesn’t have to do with the above mentioned issues?

Believing Your Own Lies

We all know that there are people who lie. But there are also people who lie to themselves and who seem to believe themselves.

Are people actually able to convince themselves of their own lies?

Do some people really talk themselves into believing their imaginary stories? Do they even realise anymore that they are lying?

This is a phenomenon that I could often observe with regard to certain people. A person that called me a few days ago told me about what a colleague of hers has done and that she thinks it is terrible. What is remarkable is that this person had done the same thing in an even worse extent over a long period of time. I didn’t know what to say. After all, she should have known I remember what she had done, so normally she wouldn’t mention similar behaviours of others in order to not draw attention to it. The only explanation is that she decided to pretend it never happened and not just in front of others but for herself.

It seems to me that some people actually succeed in talking themselves into believing that their own false behaviour never happened. It is astonishing what humans are capable of. I was aware of the fact that this person tells a lot of lies and tries to convince others of them but so far I have never realised she does actually believe them herself. This does explain some things, it makes me understand things I have never understood before.

What I am not sure about though is whether this is a sign of some serious mental disorder or whether we all do that to a certain extent.

I think sometimes people try to repress bad memories, which is perfectly understandable in some cases. However, is it still normal to behave like any false behaviour on your side  has never existed and to actually believe it?

What is even more extreme is that there are people who build up a whole world of lies. In school, one of my friends told me about a classmate that had made up his own successful band, lots of friends and a girlfriend and that he openly talked about them all the time and that apparently he told everyone how popular, rich and good-looking they all were, in addition to a lot of other rather unbelievable stories. I believe that you shouldn’t judge someone without even knowing him, so I told my friend that it might indeed be only due to unfavourable circumstances that no one had ever seen these friends, band, or girlfriend. However, I got to meet that person and at some point it became impossible to deny that something was obviously wrong with his stories (this is an understatement). No one was sure whether he believed in his own lies. In my opinion, at some point he had started to believe that his stories were true.
He has built up his own imaginary world. 

Sometimes we talk ourselves into believing certain things because we want them to be true.

Some children even have imaginary friends and you wouldn’t consider that as lying.

But where is the cross point between lying and having your own view of the world? If you believe your own lies, are you telling the truth? There is this quote that I mentioned in a post in the beginning of my blogging days: Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.

Don’t we all have our own views and opinions about who we are and how the world looks like? And if we don’t actively think about it, we think that this is how the world actually looks like. But what if it does in fact look completely different for everyone else? And I am sure it does.

So do we actually all live in our own imaginary world?

Why do we believe in certain values?

Last week, one of our professors told us about the result of a survey that showed that 47% of Americans agreed with the following statement: It is necessary to believe in God to be moral and have good values.

I do not know about the reliability of this survey, but I think it is a quite interesting question: Is it necessary to believe in God in order to be moral and have good values?

In my opinion, an individual does definitely not have to believe in God to have good values.

However, I happened to read another statement that describes a scenario in which no one believes in God and such a thing as religion does not exist. What this person says is that without God (or people believing in God), there would also be no morals and no good values because people would not believe in a higher judgement after death. But is this really true? (Note that this is not a discussion about whether a God exists; this is rather about what would happen if people didn’t believe in his existence, if there didn’t exist any religion at all.) I believe that even if nowadays there were no one to believe in God, good values would still remain. But what if religions would never have existed? Do our values and morals really exist because of the existence of certain religions? But who does really believe in the existence of hell nowadays? If people do believe in God and therefore believe in good values, do they really do that because they fear punishment? Isn’t it rather because they believe in a good or loving god?

Assuming that morals are not the origin of religion, why do we believe in them? Why do we think certain things are immoral? Who decides what is immoral? Don’t there have to be some given rules that someone specifies? What are “good values” anyway?

Is it all a concept of treating others the way you would like to be treated yourself?

The truth is, usually being selfish and ruthless is the best way to be successful in certain things in life. My brother has always been indicative of this fact. He always lied, never cared about anyone but himself, wouldn’t even think about helping another person and there he is with plenty of friends, money and time, and girls running after him. Yet I honestly don’t know how he can even sleep at night, knowing about all the things he has done.

My brother definitely doesn’t believe in some values that are generally thought to be good. But what if he has his own values? There has to be someone who decides what is good.

So, if not acting according to certain values like honesty and kindness makes us successful and if we don’t fear hell after life, what makes us still believe in them?

I think there are many influences that affect our values, maybe some of those are defined by religion, some certainly by our culture (in my opinion, this has a huge influence on a lot of people and there are clearly different values in different cultures) and some by our close environment, like family. That is where we get to know about certain values, but what makes us really believe in these?

I truly believe in some values, I have mentioned some in several other posts, amongst them kindness and honesty. But I can’t explain the reasons. I believe they are good and right and in my heart I know they are, but it is difficult to explain why.

What are some values you believe in? And why are they important for you?

I would love to hear some opinions to any or all of the questions.