Farewell 2015

Good morning. Take a sip of coffee. Don’t move too quickly. Don’t worry, you have enough time to recover from that last night - and what a night it was, right?

This is a message from the past. Greetings human and Happy New Year I guess. This is 2015, your old friend. Well, actually it seems like I’m only one of many others since you’ve left me last night. You and 2016 may have high hopes, but you and me, we have history. Don’t you remember what insane things we’ve gone through together? I know you say that every single year and it sounds so overused and cheesy, but „What a year!“

I don’t want to be shady about the ones who did this job before me, but we both know that I was the most exciting, nerve-wrecking, adventurous and beautiful year you can possibly think of. Actually, I know that’s not quite true. You just remember our time much better than the one you had with 2010, 1999, 1984 and 1971. However, for now let’s just pretend that I was the most special and precious year of your life. Do me that favour. You know, my time is up already, I’m fading away into oblivion as you’re reading these lines. I need to talk to you about something before we’ll never meet again, but one thing in advance. I will not talk about the tumbling of Jennifer Lawrence at the Oscars, about any of the Royal weddings, hoverboards, selfies or the terrible summer weather and please do not expect one single word about the Kardashians - this family is nothing I’m proud of and I pray they’ll be forgotten in 2016. I want to talk about what really changed the world, what had an impact, what pushed the course of history into one direction or another.

I can clearly see that you need some time to detox all that booze out of your body, so I will limit this to one topic, which is very close to my heart - the refugee crisis.

Caused by the Syrian civil war and the destructive activities of the Islamic State not only in Syria millions of people lost their homes, their culture, their jobs, families, friends and lastly their hope. But their misery did not find its end in a senseless death in Syria. Many brave and desperate men, women and children left everything behind to seek shelter in Europe. Many drowned in the Mediterranean Sea, many did not survive the struggle to cross half a continent, but many also reached their destinations - in most cases Germany and Sweden.

At least for those people, starving, dried out from the heat, sad to the core of their hearts, with terribly hurting feet, the pain could have found an end when they finally made it to the countries they expected to be paradise. Nevertheless, at that time neither was there any action taken to finally end the cruel war in Syria and to destroy ISIS, nor did the European Union prepare for the flood of refugees that was already bursting at its shores. Even worse there was and still is an enormous amount of nationalist and racist hate overshadowing the ancient values that once formed the first liberal republics of Europe and later on even the EU. The once so strong and faithful democratic regimes of the continent are dizzied and seem to break under the pressure of their enemies.

The one thought I really need you to bear in mind is whether the rightwing extremists are still enemies to the regimes of the past decade or whether they have somehow managed to take over them already. Look at Poland. I had hoped, I wouldn’t have to witness the systematic destruction of a balanced democracy like the year 1933 had to, but I don’t have any influence on what’s happening. It’s your task to fill the calendar sheets I can give to you.

With their inactivity and the absence of the ability to form any valuable compromise on the issue the EU strengthens those extremists even more and gives them handy evidence that the EU and liberal democracies have failed to establish an acceptable policy.

On the other side, not every single one of the individuals opposing a very openminded refugee policy should be considered an extremists. Amongst those groups are a lot of citizens, who are nothing but unsure how to cope with this situation. Especially in Germany, many elders live in fear of a change of the status quo - a character trait that may or may not be part of that generation’s mindset in general. What makes this fear so dangerous to a society living in relative harmony with its immigrants is the anger derived from it as extremists manipulate those people to enlarge their following. Nevertheless, those people are just as bound to a certain social responsibility, that should keep us from sabotaging humanitarian help, as all the others and we must not stop reminding them of this fact.

Very recently - you surely have heard of that - a coalition of many nations has started bombing the territory of ISIS to, as they claim, bring peace into the area again. Many critics have raised their voices admonishing that the necessary UN mandate is missing in every form and that the operations are so uncoordinated they might bring more confusion than consolidation.

As more and more people are letting their lives in the combats, as thousands of refugees are struggling to start all over again, having lost every bit they used to own and as the EU continues doing barely anything and thus strengthening rightwing extremists across the continent, I’m passing by. Humanity did not manage to come up with any solution for this biggest catastrophe since World War Two, besides Donald Trump of course, who, as he claims, would just shoot the whole bunch down.

I may not witness it anymore, but maybe in return for all the good I brought this year, humanity could put this horrible nightmare to an end. Thank you.

I wish you an even greater time in 2016 than you had with me this year. I loved sharing all those happenings with you and I’d be a very happy 2015 if you’d remember the time we had together.

Love xxx, 2015