Teil I ist hier.

N: Oh yes and it’s still early, I'm still only, maybe, halfway through with my day because in an hour approximately I'm going to pick up my daughter from a concert. And I'm going to drive her to a party in another town because a friend of hers has her 18th birthday. And so of course she has to go there but there is the concert first. So I'm driving her there. Then at two o'clock at night I'm going to pick her up again to take her home and then at nine in the morning we're going to go to another place, and this is a bit of a funny story because, actually it's a business meeting, sort of. Because I am a person they invite to the most curious things and they invited me to - I don't even have the words for this. I am struggling to find the words because I never bothered to learn the English words for this. You know, the round thing with branches out of Christmas tree and the 4 candles.


H: Adventskranz.


N: Yes, what is it in English? And how do you make it, what is the word, to you weave it? Or do you tie it or just make it? I don’t know. Anyway, they invited me for this activity and I said no, no I don't want to do this, I don't see myself there.


H: Oh, I remember you telling me about that.


N: Yes, and then they said maybe we have a different activity for you. You can chop, I mean cut, Christmas trees, you can go into the woods with an axe, would you like this? And I said yes. So tomorrow I’ll be going through the woods on a snowy evening, only it will be morning and probably a forest. 9 o’clock in the morning.


H: Do you have shoes for this activity?


N: No. Do I need special shoes? I thought I only needed an axe.


H: Yeah, but probably you have to walk there and with leather sole shoes you don’t get into the woods to cut a tree.


N: Well, as I said, it's a business appointment so I hope there will be some level of convenience and comfort! Business people don’t have shoes to walk into woods. I won't be the only one with that problem, someone will have thoughtfully resolved this in advance. I might wear high heels. Well, I don't have high heels, so I can't.


H: But you don’t want to either you know, you are too old to still look smart if you walk into the woods in high heels. If you were 20 people would think, Oh, that's cute. But if you are 50 and do that, people think oh she's really stupid.


N: You are so judgmental. They will think “oh that mad old pitch” and that is something I would appreciate - hey, I didn’t say pitch! I said it with a b!


H:It doesn't want to say bean pod.


N: Why does the THING write bean pod now? It's so - it's so rural!


H: Anyway. You told me this morning that in your seminar you spoke about forgiveness.


N: Did I? This morning? The day was pretty long and it's only half over for me and in another 12 hours I will chop off a tree. This is - if you think about it, you cut a tree, so you kill it, and then you decorate it and put it into your living room. That’s a bit psycho, isn’t it? Like when people kill other people and make them look nice and put them in their living rooms. Not people I know. I hope. Theoretical people.


H:We wanted to talk about forgiveness.


N: Yes, and I am almost there.


H: I think it might be convenient - once you chop someone up and maybe someone I know - then it might be convenient to know where we stand on the forgiveness thing. So maybe you would care to explain.


N: Definitely. If you forgive someone, it gives you freedom. Because you no longer have to have these thoughts in your head, these thoughts about revenge and about how much you hate that person. So the power this person's action had on you vanishes with forgiveness. So if I kill your family, you should forgive me.


H: Well. I think I would simply kill you or hire someone to kill you.


N: I know that this is a topic where you are a bit touchy, the killing of your familiy, this is why I chose this example, so that you can, you know, fully embrace the idea of forgiveness.


H: I think you can’t kill my child, he is quicker than you are and he is also feisty


N: Yes, he plays handball, so he's not easy to catch.


H: He's very quick. That's true, but you might have an axe. So, yeah, it depends. It really depends on the situation. And if you kill my husband that would make my life very complicated. But I think that you are such a good and smart person, you wouldn't kill without a very good reason.


N: Also, it’s quite an amount of work: planning work and tidying up afterwards and, I would need a very good motive, otherwise I couldnt be bothered. I don’t have time for this, killing and such.


H: And there is fear afterwards. I think that our lives are pretty good right now so why would we end up in jail.


N: Yeah, I don't see the point of being in jail.


H: Let me continue with a follow up question. Yes, um, do you forgive everything? Just to get rid of the thoughts?.


N: Well, it's an idea. You can decide. It's no obligation, but even if it's a terrible thing that was done to you - you know, it's done anyway. You can't change that. But you can change what you do with it. And if it occupies a large amount of your brain all the time and you can’t do other things, and it always comes up again and influences you in ways you maybe don't want because, yeah it's over and done, so what is the purpose, maybe to keep that thought inside you doesn't help you. So you could forgive.


H: I think I might prefer another way of dealing with it. If the person is simply horrible, I think I cannot forgive. But I can stop thinking about it.


N: Yes, it is good that you said that because it's what I also said, I can ignore it. I don't have to forgive, I can just forget. Ignore.


H: I sort of delete the thought from my head. Exactly. And because forgiving wouldn't help, because it's still a horrible person, so why would I want to do the forgiving, I could just ignore.


N: Maybe not everyone is as good at ignoring things as we are.


H: Yeah, that's true. I'm actually very sure that this is true. But for me it works perfectly. I simply erase people. Mentally.


N: I can to this too and sometimes when worrisome things occupy my mind, I assign the thoughts certain time slots during the day and so, when my thoughts start circling about the worrisome situation again, I can tell them, no, not now, your time is between 3 pm and 3:15 pm. That works fine for me. I set an alarm clock, so I don’t forget to worry at 3 pm but I stop again at 3:15. And then I don’t think about it again until the next day at 3 pm, then I have my 15 minutes again and afterwards I can continue with pleasant things.


H: That’s a very good way. And it’s a bit psycho, too. So, this is what you learned today.


N: Yes. And what did you learn?


H: Nothing. I embraced the flu.

H: Let’s do the THING.

N: There it is. Now we are doing the THING. Perfect. How do you feel about our THING so far?

H: Um, I have to concentrate on feeling how I feel right now because I’m recovering from embracing the flu. But I think that the THING is so much more time efficient for me that I totally love it. And I find it entertaining because we still can see each other every evening.

N: That’s right, and even for me it’s time efficient even though I’m at the moment the person who prepares the file for upload, because we only have to say things once, and not several times because the audio is poor. And I can always refer back to things, I can always say “I already explained, scroll up and look it up”.

[laughter]

N: Did I kill you with laughter again?

H: Yes, but it’s very easy right now because I have to cough every 10 seconds.

N: Yes, and that’s great, it gives me the opportunity to jump in and speak.

H: I actually have to tell you something.

N: Oh, please do!

H: Yesterday you told me this very uninteresting story about the rapid tests.

N: Yes. And I lied. It’s not with pregnancy. That was on purpose, that lie.

H: I did one today.

N: A pregnancy test?

H: A rapid test and you have to be very strong now. I am not pregnant.

N: Okay.

H: I also don’t have Covid.

N: That’s good to know. It really is, because you know, we met only a couple of days ago, so I’m more concerned about Covid than about pregnancy because pregnancy is not contagious.

H: It’s self imposed.

N: True.

H: So, what did you do today.

N: I was at the seminar and the topic today was self-reflection which I absolutely hate. Oh my god, do I hate it.

H: You are terrible at that.

N: Well, I can choose, I can be terrible at that and then it’s very boring. Or I can be absolutely stunning at that and then it’s very exhausting for me, because you know I have this barrier. And it’s very good. My barrier is excellent and so normally nothing can touch me at all. And I can, you know, move it down, like by pressing a button mentally, if I want that, within half a second or so it’s down and all is fine, I’m a different kind of person, all there, no mental barrier at all. But it takes effort to keep it down if I’m not in an environment where I would naturally do that. So here, of course it’s down without effort, you know, you are not dangerous.

H: Maybe you misjudge me.

N: Ha ha. But in other contexts, work for example, it’s just the default that the barrier is up, which is, for me, a very good thing, because it makes everything so much easier for me. And I can still let it down sometimes on purpose if I want to achieve something by this. It has an incredible effect.

H: But then it’s not letting the barrier down, then it’s pretending to let the barrier down.

N: Not at all, I do let it down. And nobody ever expects it and people are overwhelmed and I move it up again and continue. It’s a very good thing to have. Like a special effect. But to keep it down on purpose for an extensive period of time like three or four hours in an environment where I would not normally do this, that’s very exhausting for me.

H: It’s a mental effort.

N: Yes, a mental effort. And I usually don’t – you know, I’m so clever and normally never experience mental effort. So now I have a migraine.

H: They made you get a migraine!

N: No, I made myself get a migraine, I could choose between being bored and getting a migraine, and I embraced migraine.

H: Such a pity that we didn’t get the triptanes in Prague.

N: Oh, I got the triptans from DocMorris, but they’re at home. And I’m not at home, I’m in Kassel and there is snow here, which is beautiful. I took a walk to the seminar place and back, me in the snow singing merry snow songs for, you know, one hour and a half or so.

H: Why would you walk three kilometers to your workshop venue? I read that this morning.

N: Why not?

H: It’s far!

N: I mean, how would I – no, it’s not, it’s an hour or maybe even less, 40 minutes, something like that. How would you get there? I don’t have a bike here, and it’s uphill, so I wouldn’t like going by bike anyway. There’s no visible bus or tram, and I’m not here by car so yes, I could take a taxi, I’ll do that tomorrow because tomorrow I’ll have my luggage but without luggage, I mean three kilometers is not far. I can just walk

H: Then I have another question. Why didn’t you pick a better accommodation?

N: There are two accommodations available here because it’s not such a big place – well, there are more but they are much more expensive and they have bad reviews so I don’t pay 180 euros per night, and the review says it’s not clean.

H: No, you don’t want that.

N: I picked another location a couple of months ago, that was closer to the venue but there was this lady and she was very nice but she wanted me to sit with them in the living room and on the veranda and speak with their friends and they wanted me to explain to them about the internet and about Vodafone, they had several issues with Vodafone. And they wanted me to watch Tatort with them and I don’t want this. She was very kind and she told me that she is 75 now and she does this Airbnb thing to have contact with people, and this is not what I want. You know if I go someplace and I let my barrier down for four hours without a break I can’t afterwards explain the internet to 75-year-old ladies. It’s not possible. I have to sleep, or to entertain myself. On the internet. Yeah, I have my limits, and here they are. Total disclosure: here are my limits!

H: I think your limitations are quite obvious to anyone.

N :Do you think so? Tell me!

H: No, I’m kidding.

N: Oh, okay.

H: I’m trying to get my wittiness back from embracing the flu.

N: So, what are your limitations?

H: I have none.

N: Okay. Have you ever taken part in a self-reflection workshop and then stayed for the night with a 75 year old lady who wanted to know all about the internet?

H: No, and I think this is a very good example of me not having that limitation because that would never happen to me.

N: You don’t like taking risks.

H: Yeah, that’s probably it. I am choosing my challenges.

N: You want meaningful challenges.

H: I want better paid challenges.

N: Yeah, I’m not that money focused. I just want challenges, whatever they may be.

H: Yes, but I think the challenge for me can never be explaining the internet to le le le le.

N: The THING says le le le le.

H: Oh, the THING doesn’t know the word.

N: Is it maybe a British English expression? Instead of elderly, let’s say ancient.

H: Oh, and now when you say it, it can say elderly!

N: Yeah, your pronunciation is not good.

H: So let us subsume: if I say German it says Toronto. And if I say, elderly it says, la la la la la. The THING is bothering me. And it is only on day three and here I am talking like a person giving a language class. It’s like when I was a student and I gave crash classes in Dutch at the Volkshochschule for the unemployed. The course was eight hours per day for five days a week for four weeks. And after that, I talked like a primary school teacher on drugs.

N: I think now we have to wrap this up somehow.

H: We could explain why we do this very complicated wrapping up and not just stop because I think people asked why we do that.

N: Oh, we already explained that in episode I, so now I can say it – scroll up and look it up!

H: That’s the beauty of the THING!