Milena Moser about the challenges she set for herself: Challenge with challenge

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My friend Teresa and I have been walking together every Sunday morning for three years. Not particularly far and not particularly fast. We talk about this a lot. This walk is a dear tradition for us, but if it rains or one of us is not feeling quite fit, we don’t do it. We take it calmly, but others react with concern.

Our circle of friends shows great interest in our ritual, but they see it less as a ritual and more as a challenge. The challenge has rules and they must be followed. You can’t just abort the challenge, you’ll have to start all over again.

We are constantly sent videos of women our age taking on every challenge imaginable. Whether they are of a sporting, spiritual or culinary nature, they are all subject to strict rules and conditions. Every day! In any weather! Every bridge, every staircase, every hill in the city! All food trucks, all original cocktails! A book from a local author every week!

I watch these films with a mixture of admiration and concern. The idea that you can force life to take its course, that you can outsmart fate by challenging it, is certainly attractive. Besides that, I love lists. Sometimes I write down things I’ve already done just to check them. But I knew myself too long and too well. I know that my life is fundamentally inconsistent with my plans and decisions. And I love myself too much to deliberately set myself up for failure.

This Sunday we drove quite far to a remote beach where fat elephant seals lay in the sun and scooped up the sand with their fins. On the way back we passed a real fairytale forest and spontaneously decided to stop again and walk a little deeper into the forest. The parking lot at the trailhead was crowded, with cars lined far along the road. Apparently we found a popular hiking trail by accident.

Ahead of us walked a young man in full camouflage uniform, but, fortunately, without a rifle. Two women shouldered backpacks designed to last several days. They looked at our sand sneakers with slight disdain. In the forest we met a girl who, together with her father, had collected a whole basket of mushrooms that looked like egg biscuits, but they were candy mushrooms, that is, Zeltlihut mushrooms, which emit a sharply sweet smell when dried. “You’ll find them under the Huckleberry tree,” my father explained, and I thought it sounded like a country song.

On the way back, two women approach us with their monstrous backpacks. They look at us rather disdainfully. “It was a short walk!” – says one, baring her teeth. Even I, the eternal optimist, cannot interpret this as a smile.

We walk the next few meters in stunned silence. Then we stop and turn around. “This is not a challenge!” – we shout after the backpacks, which are quickly moving away. Then we run back to the car, giggling like two schoolgirls. “Our new motto,” says Teresa: “Life is not a challenge!”

Source: Blick