While walking down Leopoldstrasse, my daughters and I came across this amazingly tall sculpture of a white being. Just beside the sculpture was a little box with information about this creation. The Walking Man, as we learned it was titled, was created in 1995 by an American artist named Jonathan Borofsky. The description depicts the being as walking forward, “The purposeful motion and body language suggest a will to set out in search of new horizons and a determination to progress in the original sense of the term… a symbol of the human desire to move forward.”
While this sculpture and description touched us, it was in reviewing our tour books where our minds really started to race. For example, on page 96 of the May 2008 edition of Lonely Planet’s Munich, Bavaria & the Black Forest (We used this book when we came to Germany when our daughters were younger and still loved dressing as princesses!) the sculpture is described as “a white 17m-high alien captured in mid-stride.” This is not much different from Lonely Planet’s 2000 edition of Munich, which on page 114 states describes the statue as “the giant white alien striding out of No 36…”.
Always looking for a way to get my girls to discuss current affairs, I asked them if the descriptions made them think of anyone today. Their first response was the three of us on our hike that day. We were out on a walk and our mission was an adventure without Dad (who was in Berlin). That then led to a conversation about while we were moving forward, a little bit of them wanted to go backwards so they could see their friends in the USA again. We talked about how moving forward can be scary, and we can miss what is behind us. We also talked about how nothing is gone forever and how excited we’d be in a few weeks when our friends started visiting us in Germany.
It was when we talked about the guidebook descriptions that our conversation truly became creative. It started with the question, “Do you think the sculpture is an alien like the guidebook says?” My younger daughter said it could be, or it could just be a bald person like Uncle Pat (she’s my jokester child!). My older daughter (the contemplative child) said that an alien is someone here from somewhere else, just like we were in Germany. I asked who else would be considered an alien, and together both girls came up with:
- new kids in our classes
- people that move to our country from somewhere else
- an actual alien, like E.T. (Thank goodness we don’t miss the obvious ones!)
- the refugees they heard about when I made them watch the political conventions with me
The conversation just exploded from there –the refugees from Syria as Aliens. Combining both sculpture descriptions, the Syrian ‘Aliens’ ‘set out in search of new horizons [with] a determination to progress …”. They made a brave decision, one I don’t think many others could make, to leave everything they know and many they love behind in hopes of moving forward towards progress. Just like our ancestors did when they moved to North America. Just like our neighbor did when her family were refugees in Germany from East Prussia in the 1940’s.
When we look at the two descriptions combined, there is no one who has not been an alien, a refugee, a person moving with a purpose at some point in time. Isn’t that enough reason that we should show more compassion, support and encouragement as they head out in search of new (and hopefully better) horizons for themselves and their families? We all need to take that ‘Walking Man’ pose and start our purposeful journey towards a better society.
The things my daughters are teaching me….. WOW!
We all have times in our lives when we feel sorry for ourselves. Then something happens that makes it all seem manageable. For our family, most of the woes focus around eating. With Emeline having PKU, we need to do a lot of research before we go somewhere to make sure that there will be food options for her. Until we get there, we wonder if our research was outdated or correct, or if we get there and they all of a sudden decide to change their options. So when we got to the REAL store (similar to Walmart) and they had a whole section of coconut milk products, Emeline was thrilled. They had four different kinds of cheeses, several kinds of coconut milk and even four flavors of coconut yogurt (she wasn’t too happy about this since she has once again decided she doesn’t like yogurt). Anyhow, when we saw this, we did a little happy dance in the aisle – I know, just what the German folks want, more crazy Americans!
The Chance To Fly 