One day, we’ve been smoking weed, me, my girlfriend, and my best friend / workmate. I’ve got this weird bliss state of calmness and being confident.
I’ve been too confident, to the point it somewhat scared me. I slept as a baby that night, no worrying, nothing. She told me she never seen me this calm. Me too.
I have no idea what exactly triggered that state of mine. I have some notes from that evening, but in short… I scribbled something akin to ‘I’m doing everything right, so there’s no place for worries’ into my diary.
That evening was short. We lived together in a decent Thai house, so I got my dose and was like ‘huh, funny, I go to sleep, have a good night everyone.’
And I did sleep like a baby.
Ten years later, today, I still work very hard on my self-confidence and constant worrying. My sleep is a disaster.
I have some diary notes on that time period, I’ve been extremely worried over everything. Every little thing. Every single day. My diary was, I worry about this. Than, ‘I worry about that’ the next day. And something else the next day. I’ve been meditating like a pro, for like 40 minutes a day, every single day. No exceptions. Twenty minutes in the morning, twenty in the evening. Oftentimes more. No exceptions.
That friend of mine, he sees me as some kind of an arrogant, not very intelligent (but apparently smart), not very bothered with worrying self-confident silly chump. Naive, on top of that. Yet, popular among girls. With the illusion of the competence syndrome. Harsh. And evil, maybe.
Well, that might be true to some degree, but my inner perception of myself differs greatly. I’m constantly worried, and analysing it, it’s difficult to come to the point of realising there’s no point in it.
Worrying is a weird emotion. Fear, it’s strong. I’m not fearless, but these four years of war contributed to my fear greatly. I’m not afraid of dying. To the point of carelessness, sometimes. The day before yesterday we had an hour long air raid alert with Kinzhals flying our way, and I was like ‘oh, fuck it all, I have things to do’ walking down the street, right after carefully leaving my child at the school’s bomb shelter. I didn’t even bother to check what’s up, and evaluate the danger, I just played my lottery. My whereabouts was mostly in the woods, so I estimated there’s no point to waste a Kinzhal on that. But that’s still wrong. Their strategy is terror.
When I was younger, and lived in Russia or Russian-occupied territories, I was more afraid to stand my ground to some bully. Today? A Russian bully? Fuck it, a free of charge kill license! Give me two Russians to kill, please! I mean, I’m not in the military (yet?), but I’m as supportive as I can be. Given slightly different circumstances, I’d happily join eliminating Russians. I cannot imagine me having a single second thought upon some silly ‘oh, I killed a man!’ kind of regret. Are you fucking stupid or what, it’s the fucking opposite of that. The more Russians we’d kill here in Ukraine, the less Russians are going to come kill (and rape, and torture) to other places.
Fear, I have it somewhere, I guess. But not much. I’m hopeful this would stay with me. It’s very liberating, living without fear.
Kids help too. Before kids, I was afraid of many life situations, I won’t be able to do this or do that… nah, parenting changes that. Parenting is the most difficult job on the planet. Except the war, maybe. But at war you can be ‘ah, fuck it all, I’m too tired, I’d rather die now.’ With kids? You have no options. You cannot leave your kid alone, without any assistance and just die on your free will. And that’s for years. With parenting, only the second partner is what makes it survivable. Which is not what everyone has.
Perhaps having loving and caring parents can help survive parenting too. But I’m not sure there are many people with the luxury. Personally, I think I’ve seen none. I have never experienced loving and caring parents.
Comparing to war, is it like fighting with everything you may imagine? The best possible equipment and resources, and all that. Real war is when you do what you can with what you have.
Speaking of parents …
Worrying is different to fear. Fear is intense, and once you know your fear, once you meet it, it can disappear. I was afraid of spiders, I’ve met plenty, and I’m mostly not afraid of them these days. Let it be their fear, not mine. Bombs, missiles, and everyday terrorism is scary. But you learn to live through that.
Living in minus 20 degrees Celsius without heating, water, and electricity is … It’s not even scary. It’s uncomfortable. But you can deal with it. I’d very much prefer to have this, instead of speaking Russian, reading their three authors and having these fuckers tell me what to do and how to live my life.
My mother was born in Russia. But that’s not the worst thing about her. She identifies herself as Russian, as she has never seen anything else in her life. That’s scary shit, I tell you. Especially given it’s been over half a century she left Russia.
I cannot stand her since my early childhood, and there are many things about that, but I recalled just one, before starting this very note.
She was (and can you imagine it? Still is!) disapproval of everything I do! I learned to neglect her opinions, or take them as a sign of a bad idea if she actually approved something. This taught me to think independently too. But… fuck! That left a pretty darn big scar on me. I’m constantly telling myself I’m doing this wrong and that wrong, and that one too. I’m wearing myself down very enthusiastically.
The wisdom here is that nobody can be ideal and do everything ideally. That’s fucking impossible. If you think you can, you’re as smart as the current American president. Meaning you’re an idiot, you dumb fuck!
I’m joking, of course. You, you’re not an idiot, an idiot struggles with one sentence, and you’ve made it this far! You’re doing great.
So, when there’s anything I do not perfectly ideal, I tell myself about that. ‘Hey, you should have made it differently!’
I had been tracking these things in my diary, daily, for years.
That’s a good practice for analysing your life and taking some different approaches into consideration. But it’s very exhausting.
I chose to waste an hour — a night’s sleep hour, a very important one — to write this down with my iPhone, so important this thought to me.
I’ve been trying to relax, to get asleep. And I’ve realised it’s so difficult, I have the bombardment of thoughts, projects, things to do, things to distract myself with…
And then I started telling myself ‘hey, you’re good, relax, you had a very long day, you’re tired, you’re doing it right, don’t worry.’ And you know, it helped. I almost got asleep.
I chose to waste it though.
But I believe this impulse was different, and this very thought is quite meaningful and worth catching. In comparison to many others I’ve wasted my sleep with.
I wish I had a parent who’d not be constantly critical of everything I’ve been doing, ever. But who’d just tell me, kept telling me, ‘hey, son, don’t take it too seriously, I don’t care whether you’re good at what you’re doing, I love you regardless. I don’t care whether you’re a decent person, I love you regardless. I’d prefer you to be a decent person though, obviously. But I’m with you regardless, we’re a family. I’d like you to be happy, and I’d love to see the world being happy about you being. That’s what matters.’
And many other kind things. That’s a parent I plan to be.
I would prefer my kids to not drink alcohol, but I expect it to be an easy ride in that regard, I hope. I’m mocking everyone who thinks alcohol is tasty or has any benefits at all. But I’m okay if they’d drink, that’s their life. I would love them regardless. I expect this attitude can scale to many things in life.
If you did something, you did that for a reason. You faced your choices, you evaluated them, you made a decision. Go on with your life, there’s no place for constant regrets. There’s no place in worrying whether you’d be able to handle this situation or that crisis.
Well, imagine you’d fail. So what? What’s then? Your life won’t end. Or… will it? I could have been slayed with that missile. I would prefer to rather be not, but life is life. Shit happens. Even in death, there’s no much place for worrying. Even dying is manageable task. Nobody failed yet.
There’s no place for worrying. Life is too short for that. Do what you can with what you have. There’s nothing more to it. If you’d fail, you’d fall. But if you’d not, you’d have another task again.
That’s to paraphrase Gandalf from my memory.
Don’t worry. Be happy. Even if that sounds too cliche.