You clicked on this article today. Your day may be extraordinarily good, everything may be going the way you want it and you may be happy about it. On the other hand, you may have woken up on the wrong side of the bed, your day may be going in the wrong direction, you may have come up against tricky or bad incidents that affect you negatively. All of us have our ups and downs and all of us face problems, either important or not.
How many times, though, have you lost yourself in your problems, how many times have you felt that you will not make it through? There are some people who don’t trust themselves, who turn sour facing the first obstacle, who will add another problem to the list. On the other hand, there are people who evidently have serious problems, bigger than yours, and not only do they not complain but they also turn their problems into power and face them with courage. And, at that point, you wonder: “How do they cope?”
If you want to meet a person like that, then allow me to introduce you to Katerina Vrana, whom I discovered through her speech in TEDxAUEB. In that speech, she talked about the health issue that almost killed her. And this last sentence, believe me, is scarier than Katerina’s whole speech, simply because her speech doesn’t invoke in the leastpity, misery or fatalism. It is a different speech, because she is a different, positive and cheerful person.
But let’s first introduce ourselves. Katerina Vrana is a comedian, a standup comedian for those who are more familiar with the subject. She won the title of the funniest woman in 2017, the same year when she had that health incident during a tour. As a result of that incident, Katerina is facing difficulties with movement, speech and sight. Even though most people would expect her not to talk about this, hide it and quit her job, not only does she not hide it, but she has made it part of her job, she mocks it and in this way casts it away and weakens it.
Driven by her speech, I am writing today not to tell you that your problems are worthless or unimportant -everyone has their own problems- but to highlight the importance of the way you facethem. Your perspective will assign to them the appropriate weight and color. You will determine if they are going to affect you eventually and to what extent. You will set the limit that will allow external factors to affect you negatively and weaken you. And even when that happens, you will be the one to set the new conditions, which will enable you to stand on your feet again and see things differently.
Katerina’s way is humour and self-sarcasm. The way we should face all situations, according to her, is love, respect and laughter. This is the triptych she suggests and we might wonder: could it work after all? The point I am getting at with this article is that we all face problems in the course of our lives, problems that sometimes we can’t just cross out and erase (who will finally invent such an app?!). However, we can choose the way we will cope with them. Will they drag us along or will we take them with us on a bike together with a little optimism and humor and drive them?
I will end this with one of Katerina’s phrases, food for thought: “The problem is not the problem itself, but the way someone deals with it”.
Translation: Agni Gkoutziamani
Review: Asimenia Chliara
