The Globe and Mail - 02.11.2019

Opinion

SATURDAY,NOVEMBER2,2019 | GLOBEANDMAIL.COM

E

veryone on this side of Germany remembers the evening of Nov. 9, 1989, when

the extraordinary scenes from Berlin reached this far northern corner of their

40-year-old communist country.

“For me, it was a feeling of catastrophe,” says Lotte Hansen, who was born in

1939, as she strolls around the half-decayed buildings of the “model socialist village” of

Mestlin, on the rural outskirts of the Baltic port city of Rostock, in the former East

Germany. “I was teaching in the school when we heard the Berlin Wall had come down.

The next day, a couple kids were missing. The next week, even more left to go join

relatives in the west. ... It was a really terrible time for us. We took it all very personally.”

Ms. Hansen had reason to see the Wall’s demise as a disaster. In 1958, she had been

one of the young idealists sent by the Soviet-backed government of the German Demo-

cratic Republic (GDR) to expel land owners and collectivize the farmlands, in her case

as a schoolteacher and as the wife of the top local party official.

As they watched the crowds demolishing the Wall and pouring across the death

strip, both she and her students understood instantly that this would soon mean the

end of their country – although they had very different feelings about it.

GERMANY,O8

PeoplecelebrateattheBerlinWallduringtheofficialopeningoftheBrandenburgGateinBerlininDecember,1989.©PATRICKARTINIAN/CONTACTPRESSIMAGES

THE

OTHER

SIDE

Thirtyyearslater,theBerlinWallcontinuestodivideGermans,DougSaunders

writes,shapingtheirpsychological,economicandpoliticallives

OPINION

Doug Saunders is the international-affairs columnist for TheGlobe andMail and currently a Richard von Weizsaecker

Fellow of the RobertBoschAcademy inBerlin.

I

was born in 1989, part of a gen-

eration for whom gold stars

and cheerful posters proclaim-

ing “If you aim for the moon,

you’ll land amongst the stars”

were plastered on the wall of

seemingly every elementary-

school classroom. I was relent-

lessly conditioned to believe I

could achieve everything I want-

ed to achieve, and for a long time, I

believed that to be true. So far, the

defining feature of my adult life

has been a recalibration of expec-

tations. Every year, the success

and accolades I once imagined for

myself grow further out of reach. I

will not be everything I wanted to

be. That’s why I started giving my-

self participation ribbons for

achieving the bare minimum.

It’s generally accepted that

people are supposed to find pur-

pose, or at least a modicum of sta-

bility and satisfaction, in the insti-

tution of marriage, parenting and

home ownership. But having lit-

tle interest in the first two and

priced out of the latter, I look to

simple tasks such as making the

bed, watering plants and cooking

a meal to find purpose in my life.

Like so many other millennials, I

live in an overpriced city with di-

minishing job prospects in my

chosen field. But rather than fan-

tasize about torching my current

situation in favour of moving to a

cabin, a less expensive city or,

worse, grad school, I have com-

mitted to finding pleasure in the

life I currently inhabit.

As someone who has spent

most of my life working toward

the next lofty goal, my life got a

whole lot better once I stopped

searching for ways to improve it.

Mundanity is my succour. Consis-

tently completing tasks such as

keeping track of my expenses or

remembering to take my library

books back on time – all loosely

tied together under the umbrella

of “adulting” – are a form of revel-

ling in my own mediocrity. Al-

though “adulting” is a puerile

word I can barely bring myself to

utter in seriousness, I embrace the

definition of the term as a duty to

myself.

My ability to complete the

tasks that most people have been

trained to view as tedious, or a

waste of time, is my way of mak-

ing peace with living a life that is,

by all accounts, totally unspec-

tacular.

ADULTING,O5

Thesmallpleasuresofadulting

WhyIsabelB. Slonelookstosimpletaskstofindpurposeinherlife

OPINION

IsabelB. Slone is a writer
living in Toronto.

RICHARDPOUND

After20years,theWorld

Anti-DopingAgency

remainsaworkinprogress

O11

MARKKINGWELL

Narrativeisessentialto

understandinghuman

consciousness

O11

DENISEBALKISSOON

ThewildfiresinCalifornia

holdlessonswe’dallbe

smarttoabsorb

O11

ELIZABETHRENZETTI

JaneFonda,andallsenior

citizens,havearoletoplayin

thesocial-justicemovement

O2

ROSTOCK,GERMANY