I am stepping out of the hotel. I am leaving behind sparkling dresses
and champagne-attitudes, while entering a quotidian train station. I’ve always
been fascinated by train stations, as they allow perspectives and correlations
between environments. Managers meet musicians; mothers interact with those who
have never thought on boundaries. The possibilities to observe multiple
dimensions of our society shape my personal charm for these shared, public
places. I started to investigate further my interest on diverse places and
searched for a word to describe this passion of observing and entering
universes, which actually do not belong to me. The word is called:
environmentalism.
Once someone asked me which animal I
would relate the most to me. I had to think about this question more than one
year until I’ve found the answer, which felt appropriate. Here it is: I am a
chameleon. Or if we do not use biological wording – I would consider myself to
be an ‘environmentalist’. Environmentalist is someone who sparks into multiple
universes, transits between cultures and thoughts, keeping an eye open for the
daily and the unexpected and mostly: someone who never feels completely related
to one specific context.
defining environmentalism
People relate themselves to certain
groups. These groups could result from cultural aspects, such as belief or
nationality, further from interest and aspiration. But what happens once you
can’t decide? Once you realize that all the boxes you could dedicate yourself
to, do not correspond at all? Neither fear nor disillusion is the motivation
for this decision, it’s more the fact that many of these boxes somehow seem to
match, but none of them does it totally. In my life it looks like this: I am
attending space conferences as a psychologist and psychological meet-ups as a
space-enthusiast. I am doing KungFu as a dancer and I dance feeling my martial
arts body. Some might call this the impossibility to decide, I call this the
curiosity of discovering and combining.
working environmentalism
When I was a child I remember to
have a certain dream, which occurred many times during my life. In this dream,
I would be sitting on an aircraft, flying, passing by villages and cities,
observing social worlds from above. My aim would always be to fly over these
diverse environments, having the ability to stop time and just point at a
certain spot, drop down and discover. Invisibly I would enter other people’s
house and listen to their conversations, watch them eating and thinking. The
purpose is curiosity, not the desire of changing or redefining the present
environment.
Psychology, especially psychotherapy
allows me to dig into multiple environments. My job offers me the possibility
to listen to life in detail. I talk to police officers and prostitutes, to the
pope or to a poet, depressed men, sad children or women on their way back to
courage. I can spend hours of listening, observing processes individuals might
take in their lives and all these stories extremely inspire me. I never felt
bored by listening.
Listening requires the ability to
adapt to multiple ways of communicating, sharing or thinking. I’ve learned how
to deal with it: with left-wing activists, politicians, policemen and
scientists. Adaption became my passport into a world full of concepts, which I
wanted to discover.
and where is home?
My entire life was shaped by
transit, but not by arrival. And once I developed this personal concept of
environmentalism with the purpose of sharing it to others, many people asked me
the same kind of question: “Where is the place or the concept you belong to?”
I’ve asked myself this question several times until I found a place I would
consider myself to feel some kind of deep belonging to. This place can be
anywhere, but is has to be original, such as mountains or the seaside. Once I
can hear the sounds of this specific environment, such as waves or trees, I
feel some sort of pureness and connectivity.
Nature allows me to deeply reconnect
and feel security and attachment. I relate myself to wind and water, the
materials our body are shaped of (yeah, sounds esoteric, I know). Being in
nature allows me simplicity and complexity at the same time. I feel pure, calm
and related. Nature and its shapes allow me to feel my body, my breathing and
my thoughts. I never felt alone, when hiking alone as I would always relate
myself to the present moment in there.
Especially alpine environments provide a feeling of solidarity,
compassion and equality. Solidarity, as nature is shaped for cooperation.
Compassion, as nature allows protection and emotional care and equality as
nature is never asking where you come from; especially if you are a chameleon.
