The Eye Of The Storm

One single moment can change your whole life. In my case the last ten months have changed my whole life. Exactly one year ago I stucked in the hamster wheel called normality, tried to fulfill five days a week up to ten, eleven hours per day the expectations of my superiors, rotated between all the different groups of interest, went home exhausted hearing the false angel's voices in my ears: 'stress relaxation can only be achieved by consuming', knew that something went completely wrong but hadn't the power to ask or to analyze what it exactly was, most fellows around me simply replied: 'don't think too much' or 'we have to be thankful not living on the street like somewhere else and therefore be silent'.

But with the spring 2011 everything's began to change. Suddenly the classic compensation programs - honey, what DVD are we gonna watch today e.a. - didn't work any longer. The history, until that moment merely cruising in a convertible transfered in a terrific tuned sports car. During the uninterrupted race it was hard to keep all the incidents in mind. Looking back I realize now that even the summer hole which had played a central role in the last decades - when you ask your colleagues on a mid August day if something important has occured and everyone's shaking his head - simply didn't happen.

Despite becoming a stranger to the most ones I was interacting with before - 'uh, he's no longer keeping busy with the same things we do' - there was not a single second I wished back the old status I started to wake up from. Doors closed but new ones opened. New people entered my life enriching my understanding and expanding my horizon by sharing their opinions and their views. And I'm more than grateful for all those experiences. Sure, it wasn't always exciting or easy to watch what happened and unfortunately still happens in the world outside our artificial picket fences: witnessing abnormal crimes against humanity, the inability of the so called powerful to act effectively against, the daily injustice, the backlashes, the grief. But on the other side a new awareness began to grow. Terms like solidarity, compassion or understanding replaced material value, selfishness or greed. The sealed mind became more and more freed from the well placed bugs hindering us to realize the truth behind the curtain. No one embodies that better than the Syrians hidden for decades behind that one rising now up fearless and with an iron will. The big awakening is spreading in the meantime around the real and the virtual globe, a wave which became in the paradigm shifting year 2011 unstoppable. From Arab Spring to Occupy, from Anonymous to the Indignants the lesson the old powers haven't still understood is much more clearer than ever: not a few chosen are predestined to manage the fortunes of whole nations. The people becoming one are it.

Still the ugly tools of power are mainly in the hands of those being not able to handle them. But the struggle for change, for freedom, justice and dignity will continue. It's true, you cannot arrest or kill an idea. Leaving the old matrix behind frees us not only from stereotypes and motoric habits. It opens us something the so called normality has pushed the last years for more and more aside: a perspective. Time to regain it. For all of us.