Wish Economy: Make a Wish: Beyond words

This year I celebrated Thanksgiving for the first time in October. I don’t know if it was the influence of a friend from Texas or if the people I spent the evening with were just in the mood to find an excuse to drink, but we celebrated the holiday in its entirety: There was turkey from the oven (“cold turkey,” I thought spontaneously), pumpkin pie with custard (which was so sweet it actually hurt), and various other things that had been baked in the oven for a long time.

We talked about childhood, love and the state of the world – and realized what I keep noticing at the moment, namely that passivity seems to be a dying concept. It’s as if the position of the… observer would have lost their distance – as a spectator you now also bear responsibility and the apparent political non-location becomes its own category of responsibility. Appropriately enough, the Thanksgiving dinner took place in Switzerland and most of those present had a similar problem to me, namely being more or less consciously “Switzerland”, i.e. officially neutral. So, as guilty spectators, we ate our pumpkin pie and discussed our own guilt at the same distance that we blamed ourselves for. We identified it as specific to the generation Millennials: No real ones yet Digital Natives, but also none Attention Span more that allows you to read a book with concentration.

So what remains if the dedication from the past is missing and at the same time the expertise from the present? Actually just observing. Standing at the railing and watching. But what if you witness something that requires help? And what if you cannot provide this assistance, for whatever reason? I regularly think about the job of lifeguard in Berlin’s Prinzenbad in the summer – and about the fact that it is probably one of the most demanding jobs I can imagine: deadly boring, but at the same time it’s a matter of life and death.

So we sat at the table as irresponsible, guilt-ridden lifeguards, picking at our pumpkin pie and wondering what we were grateful for. The expressed thanks, in contrast to the wish, is actually useless: while the wish is there to let you visualize what you could achieve if you tried hard enough will, thanks is a confirmation of what is already there. A re-affirmation, a confirmation. Thanks also imply that you don’t feel entirely responsible for your own achievements: health, success, money, partnership. Traditionally, of course, it would be God, whom you thank for giving you a good fortune that you did not achieve yourself, but for which you may have prayed.

So we sat around the table and asked ourselves what we were grateful for. And while I’m sure we all had the usual privatistic intuitions at first, such as gratitude at being together at this table and the possibility of eating that pumpkin pie, there was something that ran through the expressions of gratitude – namely, negativity. None of us were able to abstract our individual situation from the general situation: and so we all expressed gratitude for the things that were ours not had happened. We were grateful that there was no war where we lived. We were grateful to be healthy. We were grateful to be able to (barely) pay for our apartments. We were grateful to have work. To put it bluntly, we were all, first and foremost, grateful for our privileges. It was downright disappointing, unimaginative – and seemed shockingly anachronistic.

And it perhaps showed two things: firstly, that we had finally become adults and secondly, that the situation in the world might be awry in a very specific way. That the things from which you are wish that they would be taken for granted are currently in particularly acute danger. And that you therefore lack the basis for wanting all the things you would actually like to have: new Falke tights, for example, or preferring a cheesecake to a pumpkin pie. A job that allows you to afford a larger apartment – or one that is better located. Eating out more often in expensive restaurants and having a little affair with the neighbor.

And suddenly it became clear what we actually wanted: namely, a world that is so okay that you can wish for all these things a little bit more are. Not existentially, but simply a little bit higher than you dare to express in your modesty, in the humility that you have in the face of the horror that goes on every day. We felt very clearly that what we wanted first and foremost was to be able to wish for something. Not in the ambitious way in which you have to dare to want something, but in the oblivious way.

We wished, and still do, that we didn’t have to thank ourselves for our privileges, but instead were allowed to focus on the little things. With the unimportant things, the luxury, the small and big extras. Things got very serious at the table when we realized that we were only grateful for certain things not happened. And it became quiet too – because there wasn’t good topic of conversation, it was the end of the conversation. There was no funny anecdote that we could think of to tell and the praise for the really fantastic cake suddenly seemed poor.

And so we said goodbye and walked home thoughtfully. And some of us, me for example, said a prayer before going to sleep. And unlike my childhood prayers, which always had something like “Dear God, please make sure my bike doesn’t get stolen and that the soccer player from my parallel class is in love with me,” this time my prayers weren’t about myself. And somehow I was at a loss for words because what I was thinking about was, as they say, beyond words.