Strange how difficult it is – even in empty heads – to produce an echo.
Stanislaw Jerzy Lec
The beginning of a new year, indeed a new decade. A moment to become aware of how much you have forgotten in retrospect. Or what did not work, went wrong. Or what just went well. No matter how, who is lucky enough to be able to think critically, to stand by themselves, to hold meaningful conversations and to ponder about their content, there are also certain personal questions that ask themselves: Who am I? What can I? What am I actually worth? These doubtful questions can pop up on our personal screen (to stay in our digital world that dominates us) and keep us busy. Questions that many of us can answer “in modern times” from a human distance, but rather through a social echo, to which we are all subject in some form, through our “social” contacts on the (un) social media, rather than through direct human feedback , But always with the intention of having our “image to the outside” confirmed as positively as possible. The social echo is probably more important than ever for modern people!
The fact is – and this is actually questionable – that more and more people are turning in the seemingly alternative hamster wheel of our “modern” society and do not want or cannot ask honest personal questions. This is due to a wheel that is also turning faster and faster and puts many of us in a state of uninhibited activity. We are busy around the clock, struggling as hard as possible, but often do not really know what we are doing and why not … Modern people generally act according to a predetermined pattern without really being aware of their actions, the subject Mindfulness is not being increased psychologically this year for nothing … Quite simply: we work in such a way that the social echo, which is the subject of these lines, should ideally be positive towards our person, nobody wants to be negative in any way – or be negatively commented on , Of course, this permanent “must function” is particularly important for the economy, which as a consequence of the hot autumn of 2008 has by no means overcome its crisis-stricken state – and is destroying people as such! But this is only a marginal issue here. Something else is more questionable in the context of the social echo we are so lurking for. The fear of the “no”, the (healthy) “being able to say no”! That is very difficult for many of us! What if I just say no to that? Then I risk a negative social echo, which may go even further, because it may have additional, but inevitably negative consequences for me – and even if I personally, in a healthy form of selfishness, through this ” No ”, which I express unequivocally, can go much better. And the well-known fact also applies in this context: Those who swim against the current have a harder time. Because, as psychologists say, “we not only have to fight against our own little whirlpools, but also against the basic pull of our society, which cultivates the” yes “” – and rewards it! Because it is “better”, because you are “good” and through this “yes” (supposedly) “easier” you get through life. One is “liked”, “liked” to stay in the all-encompassing, digital jargon, quite simply: the social echo is positive!
Only: you get less and less perceived – and at some point not even more by yourself!
A no is not easy because it is always uncomfortable. But it is also the best prevention against a boring, adapted existence, against a life that just “happens”!
Because, according to the French writer of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution Nicolas Chamfort:
The ability to pronounce the word “no” is the first step to freedom.
Frank Bertemes
