Don't step on my testicle
by Michel Heitzmann
© Michel Heitzmann - Let the bumble be
The plane lands and makes it to the gate. Ping goes the speaker. In unison, passengers get up to deplane. They jam the aisle with carry-ons, kids, elbows, convinced that being first standers equals fast deplaning. My seat is always on an aisle. I wait seated. Inevitably, I get whacked by the coat, the bag, the butt.
It pisses me off. Not because of the coat.
I respect your space and expect the same back. That is not a complicated stance. It is the one I have held my entire life.
You can be a fucking lunatic if you want. I let you be.
That is, until you step on my testicle. Then I holler and let the fingers loose on the keyboard.
That defines me as a liberal. Yes! A liberal! A label which in America earns you a place in a hospice and which in Europe has been quietly removed from profiles, softened in meetings, replaced with “I tend to think” instead of “I believe.” I have watched people who hold exactly these values perform their own disappearing act unaware and often in slow motion.
Free from corporate handcuffs, I am now in overdrive.
A concrete example. My accountant told me I had a tax liability in Russia. Pre-Ukraine, but not pre-Putin. She admonished me with the grave consequences of not honoring it. I asked her to cook the books and gave the money to the Swiss government instead, as the alternative was funding something I consider indefensible.
Nobody noticed. That is often how convictions work. They show up in small, invisible acts that nobody applauds. They feel good.
© Michel Heitzmann - Am done
Others pay more for the same conviction. They emigrate. Or stay and go quiet. Many die.
Convictions are also useful in the collective. And on that front, we have our work cut out.
I am not making this up: some folks think that Switzerland needs a cap of ten million residents. Due process, enough signatures, it goes to a vote. A democracy deciding how many humans are allowed on our island. So far, I am arguing against this lunacy as polls indicate we are in a throw of dice moment.
I start with historical perspective: does anybody believe that a bunch of shepherds came down the mountain and figured out chocolate, watches and pharma? The answer is no — check Nestlé and Rolex.
Then the economics and genetic pool arguments. Foreigners pay taxes too. How do you think we got semi-decent at football? Have you checked the composition of the team lately, Frau Meier?
None of that registers with the people who signed the petition. I go for the absurd and wacky scenario. Imagine they win and the constitution is changed. By 204X, the country hits exactly ten million. And we will now, we count everything over here.
A baby is born. Shit — somebody quickly die, or we deport Shakheela or Granit. Perhaps even both to have some wiggle room.
Here we are, because of the constant noise, with fewer people who think.
Jemima Kelly wrote in the FT that liberals should be less shy about saying what they stand for. She is right. Shyness is not modesty. It is capitulation by installment. The salami slice-cutting applied to identity, one thin slice of self-censorship at a time, until one day one looks down and cannot find what one used to believe in. Compromises at work.
The world does not need more people who almost hold convictions. It needs normal people to make their point clear and resist a butt in their face.
The slicing is what the world does to you. The quiet is what you owe yourself.
Have you been sliced up lately to make others more comfortable?
The world is loud. Yours doesn’t have to be.
An app to help you take a step back is available on iOS and Android. The Quiet Frame gives you space to reconnect with the world and yourself. It is a window, perhaps an open door, to other cultures, nature and our planet. It is free for 7 days.
The Swiss shepherds may not have been smart enough to invent chronographs, but they were smart enough to let the watchmakers make Switzerland their home.
Baaar none.