Not surprising probably: this was again, a hard year. Not sure, if it was harder than 2020, many of the provocations of the first year of this world changing pandemic and "great reset" (whatever is reseted, not sure if the ordinary people feel this) was already familiar. The third semester at the university in Sibiu "in home office" was among the most horrible thing I ever experienced. There were students I never met, only digitally: for a teacher and educator, this is trully distopic. I was so gelous of some friends, colleagues who were working on fieldwork, with real life human beings, far from the distopic world of zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and other digital platforms. I missed my students, the university life, the academic events, conferences, travellings - all, that represents actually the living part of my job. This trauma - really, for me it was a traumatic experience - marked also my opinion on the world pandemic. Although vaccinated twice (not more), I fully agree with the Stanford-Oxford-Harvard professors and their 15.000 virologists and researchers, who founded and signed the Great Barrington Declaration on the problematic nature of lockdowns (The Middle Ground between Lockdowns and “Let it Rip.”). This issue marked my relationship with some persons, who were very loud on pro-lockdown and biopolitical control of our society. I can't understand them, but following the basic principle of democracy: I do agree that we don't agree and that everyone has and should have a voice in this matter, because it is way beyond a medical issue now (it is social, historic, legal, political, economic too). As Stephen Hawking said: All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.
Beyond this however, I tried to keep my existing friendships from Sibiu and from the second half of this year, in Szeged, my current place of living. The year marked also the last full year of my postdoctoral project, with numerous academic and personal provocations. My health was also affected by this situation and the overload of work and anxiety.
Despite these aspects, as in every year, I did have some good things in 2021, beautfiul moments, which gave me hope and power to go on.
Here is my list of gratitudes of 2021:
- I am happy, that I have my friends from Sibiu: they helped me a lot to survive my third "home office" semester and represented my island of joy in the first half of this dark year
- Glad, that I discovered almost daily the beautiful park of Sibiu and the natural landscape around. No internet, no media, no fear-propaganda there. Only you and the calm beauty of nature.
- I am grateful for the summer: the sunshine, the beautiful memories and meetings of Cluj, my hometown, Szeged.
- Happy, that I was able to visit Italy also in this year with a friend and met some of my old friends there. The Urbs gives me a resurection, a power for the rest of the months every time I'm there.
- Grateful, that I found a place to live in Szeged and for my old and new friends there: the effervescent university life at the campus is an all time inspiring place.
- Happy, that despite of this hard year, I was able to finish somehow - almost miraculously - the manuscript of my biggest book to come and ten other studies in this year
- I was lucky to avoid till now this new virus and its endless variants, but my health is not functioning in full capacity anymore.
- I am grateful, that despite this year which divided the world in two radical groups (pro and anti), I met new friends and kept some of my old ones. For those, who I lost as "friends"....well, once we will all be Light and stardust, so these are minor issues.
