The power of serenity

 After living in the US for so long it was getting time for me to become a citizen, but to avoid giving up my German passport I applied for a double citizenship exception and was told that it would take a year. This was during the Corona crisis so I gave it 15 months before inquiring again about what happened to my application. Three days later I got a letter from Germany telling me that I hadn’t proved yet that I still have ties to Germany. I got really upset and shouted, ‘It took you 15 month to come up with this response? Keep your stupid passport!’ Well, after a few minutes of calming down I thought to myself that it is just another step in the process. Of course I have connections to Germany, my family lives there. On top of that, I covered Germany for decades professionally. There are plenty of business contacts that I could re-activate again. So I sat down and wrote a letter making my case.

 

Isn’t that how it goes with most problems? When we take our self-identification out of the picture, our hurts and misguided aspirations disappear. Suddenly everything gets much easier. It turned out that after 15 months of processing my case it was pure coincidence that the response from Germany reached me three days after I had inquired at the German consulate. Within a couple of weeks I had my exception and was free to receive double-citizenship. That’s the power of serenity at work. I am not saying that every problem gets immediately solved by getting an open mind about it, but I am saying that every problem is designed to get our self-identification out of the picture. Serenity is always at our disposal.