Growth makes you illegible before it makes you successful

I am back in Berlin for a few weeks, and I am always flabbergasted by the energy here. People are so mean to each other. So negative. So caught up in their own (privileged) lives that they don’t seem able to recognize the abundance life provides.

One of the things I keep seeing here, especially in queer spaces, is this tendency to make people who are trying to be hopeful about their lives, who dare to imagine a future, who want to take up the full space of their bodies, go through a little humiliation ritual that sends them spiraling into shame. Let me explain.

My roommate is 23 and full of life. She is so passionate about what she is doing, and with that comes the desire to share her dreams for the future with the people she loves. She wants to positively impact the world around her. She wants to contribute to the well-being of queer folks.

Last night, she went on a date with a cutie she’s been seeing. When she shared her dreams for the future, her date replied: “That sounds so neoliberal.”

This is when I had to warn her: