Over the years, whenever I looked back on those roughly eleven months in Germany, I realized that I had not really sunk into the German culture. Yes, I had done a ten-week intensive language course. Yes, I had lived with a German family. However, I worked forty hours a week in the American Embassy. I often played pickup basketball with the Marines and other American guys on the weekends at the American School. I read the International Herald Tribune just about every day.
I didn’t make much of an effort to meet and hang out with Germans my age. I had been invited to get togethers, to a few parties, to some events. But honestly I never felt very comfortable. I was only twenty-three years old, and perhaps a bit immature for my age. I’m not sure.
Or maybe there were some things about the Germans which I did not like or did not feel comfortable with. It was a long time ago. And it has all been layered over by thirty-five years in Germany. I suppose it would be quite a feat to recall the emotions from back then, from forty-three years ago.
Germans are different than Americans. Americans are different then Germans. Different can often be uncomfortable. Different can be challenging. It’s like getting out on the dance floor, or being pulled out onto the dance floor, without knowing how to dance. In front of other people. Awkward. Uncomfortable. Embarrassing.
What about the Germans might have I not liked or made me feel uncomfortable or insecure? It’s been so long. I can only guess. Perhaps their matter-of-factness, their directness. Could it have been the language? I don’t think so. It can sound a bit harsh, a bit gutteral. But then again, the Germans can be so personal, respectful, caring.
It must have been me. I am here in Germany now. More than thirty-five years. Just about my entire adult life. Yes, very much connected to the United States. Through my work in the Bundestag. Through my integration work at Siemens. In the entire thrust of my work since my graduate degree in Berlin.
In fact, surveying all of those three and a half decades, it is clear that my focus has the entire time been on understanding the relationship, the relations, the interactions, between the two peoples, the two cultures, the two countries.
So, those eleven or so months back in 1981-82 could not have been all that uncomfortable. Or maybe so, but that people change, grow, mature, and face and address and explore the things that are uneasy, that are disconcerting, strange, foreign, uncomfortable. That last term, uncomfortable, I keep using it.
Who doesn’t like comfort? Who doesn’t like easy, manageable, predictable? However, too much of those things aren’t good either. They can mean stagnation. Gray, bland, listless, drab, uninteresting, uninspiring. I don’t think we human beings were made for that, are built for that.
Frankly, maybe we’re built for uncomfortable, for challenge, change, growth, testing, experimenting, trying, for effort. Perhaps we are even made for pain, defeat, getting back up, taking the hits, perseverance, struggling, fighting. And not for leisure. Rest, yes. Leisure, some. But not too much.
Made for pain. If you’re an athlete of any kind, and serious about it, you know pain. My post from yesterday was about Daniela’s father and his war injuries. Kursk. One of the greatest of all tank battles in the Second World War. That’s pain. I was present at the birth of my son. If that isn’t pain, a woman bringing a human being into the world, then I don’t know what pain is.
And then there is emotional pain. The untimely death of a parent, of a sibling, of a dear friend. And worst of all, with not even a close second, there is the death of a child. Innocent. Did nothing wrong. Cannot have done anything wrong. Then suddenly gone. No more laughs. No more giggles. No more excitement about the smallest of things. No more reading a story before falling asleep. Soft. Delicate. Vulnerable. Just a child. Look into their eyes.
So, whatever discomfort I may have felt back then as a young man in Germany was very minor, hardly worth even mentioning. Let me repeat, I did come back, determined to sink in. And sink in I did.