Martin Hähnel

The Full Catastrophe

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Just brought the car to the repair service. We managed to scrape the column that is next to our parking spot in the parking hall twice (once me, once my partner). So we basically had to bring the car for the same damage to the same repair service in the span of a year.

Two things I struggle with when blogging at the moment:

  1. Naming: I am unsure how to name/title journal entries! I guess the naming should be done at the end, before publishing so that journal entries mean something and maybe also entice to read a little more than "Journal Entry For 2026-02-16" which is the name of this post at this moment.
  2. Images: I want and also don't want to add images all the time to these posts. But it just takes to much time. So I don't. But then I think: It'd be nice... But then I also think: But then some weird picture is showing up as the image of the post on Mastodon. So for now I try to not post pictures and keep it no-frills (images count as frills).

Being back at home and working from here is nice. There is a certain coziness to the tightly-knitted madness that is my life. The combination of dog walking, chores, my job and making sure I get enough sleep can feel like a pretty busy juggling act at times. But coming back from the trip yesterday makes me realize that I like my life, even if it is "a lot" at times.

It made me think of the concept of "Full Catastrohe Living". I will quote from Wikipedia:

The title Full Catastrophe Living is derived from the film Zorba the Greek, in which the title character says, in response to being asked whether he has ever married, "Am I not a man? Of course I've been married. Wife, house, kids ... the full catastrophe".  According to Kabat-Zinn:

Zorba's response embodies a supreme appreciation for the richness of life and the inevitability of all its dilemmas, sorrows, traumas, tragedies, and ironies. His way is to "dance" in the gale of the full catastrophe, to celebrate life, to laugh with it and at himself, even in the face of personal failure and defeat. In doing so, he is never weighed down for long, never ultimately defeated either by the world or by his own considerable folly.

And in my best days, I view my life like this as well.[1]

  1. There are reasons, which I alluded to in my 2025 - Year In Review post and I can't (won't) still talk about it openly, yet, that makes this an even more an important concept to me. ↩︎