-
Usernamesilkeb
-
Password
Leave password field empty to keep your existing password!
-
Confirm Password
Hii! I am a seventeen-year-old girl from the Netherlands. I am still in highschool but aspire to write novels in the future. I love reading, writing and anything cultural or artistic.
The spring which is on the verge of beginning
Mar 03, 2022 2 years ago“It's because of the snow … the monotony, when everything around you is white, the differences fade. I long for spring, don't you?” This is the question Maarten Klein asks his wife Vera in the book ‘Out of Mind' by J. Bernlef. Maarten does not like the winter, it is white, foggy and makes him forget things. Of course, the reason for his forgetfulness is not the snow, but his emerging dementia. Maarten states that differences fade when everything is white, or monotone. This is something which I, in times of lockdowns and in the rut of school, could relate to very much in the past two years. Captivated in a long, white, monotone winter. When does this winter end? March 2020. I am fifteen years old and everything shuts down. Here in the Netherlands, a so-called ‘intelligent lockdown' is introduced. We have passed two years and almost forty press-conferences about Covid and I have lived two significant years of my life in a way that I was not supposed to. Years in which every day seemed the same and the differences faded. Only once you turn sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. My older sisters tell me stories about their senior year, filled with parties and a lot of fun things, especially their senior year without Covid. The only thing I can think about, is that I have not had these experiences and also will not get them. “I have to go outside, I have to be there, walking past the trees, on the springy ground.” Yeah, me too Maarten, me too. I have to be there too. Parties, festivals, vacations and so much more, but I am stuck in the rut of school, the routine that repeats itself every day. It is white, it is monotone and the differences, they fade away. The hardest part of all of this might be that an outsider does not understand how this all makes me feel. Just like Maarten who is not being understood because he keeps everything to himself. The older generations tell us youth that ‘we all are in the same boat'. Yes, that is right, this crisis is something no one would have wished for. But as the Dutch musician Alain Clark said in a talk show: “If you're eighteen or twenty, you'll never be that again. The two years I have missed from forty to forty-two, are a shame, but I will move on.” This was actually the first time I felt like I was heard by the older generation. “the spring which almost begins… she says… she whispers… the spring which is on the verge of beginning… “. Those are the last words from the book ‘Out of Mind'. For me as well, for the youth, the spring is on the verge of beginning again. The long winter filled with monotone days seems to come to an end. The nightclubs are opening again, the theater seats are filled and life will begin again.
Load more
