We witness the encounter of the two from afar, invisible to our protagonists. The little girl on the ground turns around and makes hasty movements, trying to come to her feet before Grand G arrives. Great G reaches out her hand and kneels down, trying to calm Cheeky C down. She says something to Cheeky C, which makes her stop moving. She listens, her tiny body on eye level with Great G’s face, who now slowly puts her hand on the girl’s shoulder.
The streetlamp casts its dirty yellow light on the two, their shadows melting with the nocturnal darkness around them. Cheeky C shakes her head several times in reply to what Great G says to her. We can see the bewilderment in Great G’s face. A cold breeze blows down the street, and the girl shivers in her light red vest. This time she reluctantly nods in reply to Great G’s words. Finally, they both turn and walk towards Great G’s house, bypassing us and speeding up their walk as another cold breeze whispers through this memorable night.
Great G hands a cup full of tea to Cheeky C and sits down next to the girl on her couch, wrapped into a fluffy blanket, just one meter away from the chair where Great G sat and stared out of the window minutes ago. Minutes before her life was thrown out of normality by the mysterious appearance of a small child with two honey-brown braids. The tea is Great G’s favorite flavor, cinnamon with cocoa, and fills the small living room with its pleasant scent. ‘And you really can’t remember who you are? Not even your name?’ Cheeky C shakes her head. Life has taught Great G to question everything and to believe nothing at first, to stay vigilant. But she feels that her small visitor has spoken with an honest and open heart, with the innocence of a child. Nevertheless, she can barely believe it. How can you not remember who you are in this world?
‘What’s your name?’ Cheeky C’s high voice brings her back into the present moment.
‘Everyone just calls me Great G.’ ‘
And who are you?’
‘An old woman close to the end of her life’. And captured in an everything-consuming black hole of frustration, despair, and fear, she thought, because of the world as it is in the 21st century, because of all this war, starvation, poverty, and displacement that is still going on and where I feel I failed to contribute to betterment before I became old and energy of life began to leave my body slowly, day by day. But she didn’t say that out loud.
‘Hm’. Cheeky C tilts her head, looking at her with intelligent, vigilant eyes that suddenly seem to be much older. ‘Are you happy?’
‘What is happy, what is happiness?’ Great G asks back, regretting her sharp tone. What is happiness? How can happiness be possible in this world where so many things are about money? Earning, spending, saving, lending. And again earning. And fearing the moment you fail to function all the time. Some form of enslavement, she thought grimly, from the moment you leave your parental nest and enter work life. With only a little time for yourself to fully unfold all facets of your personality. And to become happy.
How can happiness be possible in this world where so many things are about money? Earning, spending, saving, lending. And again earning. And fearing the moment you fail to function all the time.
‘For me, happiness is knowing who I am in this world,’ says the small girl in front of her. ‘And I want to find out who I am in this world, Great G.’
‘Wow. This will be the journey of a lifetime.’
‘Journey?’
‘All inclusive. Transportation will be in a flying can with too many people and too few emergency exits because it’s profit over people. Destination: unknown. Attention, you might get into turbulences and storms. The food is disgusting. Inflation skyrocketing. Backpacks ready?’
‘You are joking.’
‘Of course I am. But you just won a special travel discount.’
‘Which one?’
‘I am coming with you.’
I might be too old, Great G thinks, but if I go with her and help her to find out who she is, I might also find happiness and an answer to the question that I have been pondering for decades now: How to change the system that brings us money and prioritizes money and selfishness above anything else into a system that prioritizes global health, the wellbeing of both society and the planet?
And so, after a long night with an unexpected and life-changing twist for our travel companions, they go upstairs and to bed, Cheeky C in Great G’s bed and Great G on a mattress in another room, both tired but lying awake, lost in their thoughts and questions about the very foundation of being and happiness. We now leave the two, come back into our own lives, and wait to see how the journey that just started on a cold, dark night in Toronto will continue.
How to build resilience – what Bochum taught me
“A social banker needs to be very connected to his or he…