Weltschmerz

What I'm feeling right now

Here’s my September column for the Holland Sentinel…

For several years I lived in a German-speaking part of the world, and while there I was required to learn the language, which I did, as well as a person my age can learn an entirely new language.

One of my happy discoveries is that German speakers have a word for nearly everything, and when a word doesn’t exist, they invent one, often by mashing two or more words together.

The word “Weltschmerz” was just one of my happy discoveries. It means pretty much what it sounds like—best translated as “world weariness.” What makes the word seem just right to me is that “Schmerz” by itself refers to pain, agony, or suffering. In other words, to feel “Schmerz” is to experience physical pain. To feel “Weltschmerz” is to physically experience the pain of the world.

Which is what I’m doing right now as August gives way to September, and as summer holidays give way to the new school year. We are starting up again, and instead of the usual anticipation and excitement, which I have felt most of my life at this time of year, I feel, well, pain. Not agony, maybe, and not exactly suffering, but whatever it is, it feels real. It’s weighing me down.

The end of the 20-year war in Afghanistan certainly contributed to this feeling. The sight of people clinging to the underside of a C-17 military transport, or running alongside the aircraft as it attempted to take off, creates the feeling of physical pain.

And then, though it’s not quite on the scale of the Afghan evacuation, there’s Hurricane Ida and its aftermath of destruction. Lessons were apparently learned in 2005, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, which resulted in the deaths of 1,800 people and the loss of $125 billion in property, so the news images (so far) haven’t been as bad as they were then, but I still feel the pain of what I’m seeing. Maybe it’s a form of PTSD.

After Katrina I went with a high school youth group to offer assistance in the cleanup effort. Our bus was filled with happy and talkative teenagers who suddenly became quiet as we drove through the hardest hit areas of New Orleans. We experienced unusual silence on the bus that day as noses were pressed against the windows. What we saw was terrible, and I’m feeling some of the pain I felt that day.

Finally—though if I thought hard, I could probably add to this list—there is the ongoing global pandemic. What makes the current situation so painful is that we were supposed to be past the worst of it by now, returning to normal. Vaccines were produced in record time and made available free to the entire population in our country, a marvel of research and medicine, a logistics success story.

Except for one thing: Not everyone, as it turned out, wanted a vaccine. And by “not everyone” I mean nearly half of the population in the U.S. And so, with the new Delta variant, which spreads faster and is more deadly than its predecessor, our country has now returned to levels of infection not seen since January. To say that I’m discouraged would be an understatement. I feel this deeply, physically, as well as emotionally. It hurts in ways I would not have predicted.

But the vaccine issue doesn’t stand by itself. Closely connected is the resistance to using masks, a fight being waged in courtrooms and now school boards across the country, including our own community. What I find so painful—maybe the word “agonizing” fits here—is that many of those fighting both vaccines and face masks are Christians, a group I have identified with throughout my life.

I listen to the arguments, and I try to understand, but the truth is, most of what I hear has nothing at all to do with Christian faith. It is talk of individual rights cloaked in Christian vocabulary. It is a blend of nationalism and Christianity that I do not recognize as the faith I was taught.

What I learned in Sunday school (and in the two-times-per-Sunday sermons I was subjected to for the first 18 years of my life) was that “greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” I believed those words then, and I believe them now. I received the vaccine for myself, yes, but I did it for others too, for members of my family, for the people I meet each day, for my community. I’m taking the risk (vanishingly small) for the sake of everyone I know.

Knowing that other Christians aren’t willing to do this gives me Weltschmerz.

Photo: Another one of my ancestors, who looks like he’s feeling Weltschmerz.