Cosima Underwater

We all do things that we shouldn’t do. You don’t? I bet you dream about it once in a while. Is that better? Just to fantasize?

When you grow up you are confronted with limits, rules, morals, and consequences. That sounds very drastic, but most of the time you don’t realize it.

That’s just the way it is. When you live with your parents, in your country, go to the school or church you are sent to, there are values that are there and that you don’t even view as changeable.

What has always interested me is why people cross lines that they grew up with. That’s revolution, isn’t it? Revolution has that positive connotation, but in my opinion it can go either way. What’s better kept the way it is, what is better changed. We only know in retrospective, sometimes not even then.

Did you cross moral lines that your parents would have never crossed? Why? I bet you thought of yourself first. Thinking that you have to go that way just to survive.

What has always fascinated me is how people react in life-or-death situations. Do you duck and hide, give up, try to play hero, or do you have the sense to do the right thing. It’s instinctive and most of us, luckily, will never experience it.

I am fascinated with my grandpa. I don’t think he was a “good” person. He only married my pregnant grandma after three of her brothers “told” him what’s the right thing to do. My dad equals childhood with holding his head low to avoid slaps from his dad. However, when my grandpa received his draft notice from Hitler Germany he reclined and went into hiding. I ask you what’s the moral of that piece of history?

Human beings are imperfect. One side of me would like to be tested if I really knew to do the “right” thing, the other side of me thinks that the test is already on, it will just never be in history books.