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It was raining. Everyone was running to places they had to be with hectic steps, as if dancing in the rain. The crowd was overflowing from pavements onto the bike lanes. Next to them were cars, lined up waiting for the endless pedestrian traffic on crosswalks that could only be penetrated by the playful ring of a blue and white tram. A new week started and the campus came out fresh from the weekend. People were smiling, waving at each other, and almost everyone had some music on their headphones. On Monday, the crossing where Tannenstrasse and Rämistrasse meet was transformed into an open-air silent disco.
About flying away and diving in
What am I doing in this lively picture? I was on my way to an editorial meeting. After turning onto the beginning of the Universtätsstrasse I saw one of the most beautiful views of autumn. Leaves, no longer able to stop themselves from falling, had been weaving a yellow carpet on the sidewalk. Trees that still had most of their leaves displayed ten different shades of yellow. As I walked into the department building, two ravens took off from the top branches and flew away to distant lands, never to return.
I walked through the wide and bright corridors full of small institutes’ offices from where I could hear singing voices through the walls. By the time I reached the meeting room, two minutes later, people were already talking about this month’s issue. Laughs and jokes were all over the room. The theme was optimism, which aligned perfectly with the situation of the magazine. The new academic year brought new faces and a few changes to the team. Me, for example, who quickly delved into the depths of my own mind during the talk of optimism. For a moment the laughs and discussions were far away leaving me alone with my own thoughts.
The story doesn’t end here
Am I optimistic? Well, I try. Knowing myself better than anyone else makes it harder. Being aware of everything going through my mind and seeing how less comes out as actions… I slowly turn into the shade of a man who can do nothing but dream of a better future, giving up my cultivated taste in life. Each day I am being dragged along by assignments, meetings, and everyday struggles, and when I finally have time to start my day, it is usually already over. Some nights, especially right before dawn, I manage to reach new lows. My past self judges me, my version that believed in a better future and lived in a better past than I am preparing for my future self. It seems hopeless, doesn’t it? But no, I know the story doesn’t end here. When you have hit rock bottom and have nowhere else to go, you slowly start to climb up. When being pessimistic fails because every aspect of life already stinks, then you slowly start recovering, believing in the better days again, even if you think you are being naïve. Because you can only stumble in the dark for so long before you hit the light button. If you think being optimistic is about seeing improvement, you are wrong. Improvement would be proof that things are going well, optimism is about the belief, the belief in the good when there is no apparent reason for it. So yes, I guess this answers my question. I am optimistic as hell, sitting at the bottom of a deep well, looking up at the ray of light above.
“… this was it for today, thanks for coming.” More laughs, smiling faces, and a short round of applause. After leaving the room, I walked back through the corridors, the street with trees, and the disco. I took tram line 9 and disappeared from the lively scene.
