And suddenly I stood right in the middle of a rally against Corona measures. Between vaccination opponents and hippies, members of the “Identitarian Movement”, people who have lost their jobs and those who want the German Kaiser back. All without masks. All very loud. I moved on a little perplexed – this mixture of dissenters could not touch me.
What touches me, however, is my insecurity at how to deal with friends, neighbors, colleagues and clients who have a completely different opinion about Corona and all the measures we have to put up with the plague. And again and again I ask myself, how do I best deal with it? Talk about it? Try to convince them?
We all try to explain the new complicated world to ourselves and somehow process the overwhelming flood of information. It’s not surprising that one or the other friend ends up with somewhat twisted answers in this challenge. And yet sometimes it is so hard to bear. When your neighbor thinks everything about this pandemic is “totally exaggerated”, when your good friend wants to calculate Covid-19 away with facts and figures. When the mood among colleagues at lunchtime changes as the cocktail of opinions becomes too colorful…
Then I wish for a little modesty from all sides in dealing with the own opinion. Yes, it might be that it is one’s own opinion that defines the human being of today. But do we always have to make this opinion known, regardless of losses? Isn’t it also worthwhile to simply listen and reflect: ‘Aaaaaah, so that’s how my colleague thinks. Interesting.’ Then I don’t even have to think about what I can say against his opinion. I don’t have to argue and certainly not try to convince.
When I think about it now, I notice that this unspeakably annoying mask even helps in a way to keep all those opinions from falling out of the mouth too easily.