I am tired and alive. Today, without much structure or answers, just about the desire to fit everything in and figure out how to feel grounded in a world of endless possibilities.
Insect or Superhuman?
Lately, I feel torn apart by the sheer amount of everything I do, ideas, and choices. Preparing a presentation for Swedish class or finally performing with the choir — that’s roughly my daily choice, because there’s never enough time for everything.
I want to do so much, but I am just an insect, limited to about 4,800 weeks of life that could end at any moment. Yet, I am a creative insect — one who doesn’t just play roles but creates them. I am a superhuman of choice.
Naming as a Support
Naming things still helps a lot. Just the other day, I found a name for the dream job I’ve been searching for years. I still have a long way to go, learning and gaining skills to get that job, but having a name is a huge support, an anchor in the sea of meanings. Naming works for everything — many people just need to label things black or white to calm down and let go of the complexity of existence — God bless.
I get angry at simplifications, but let those people be, maybe they really managed to leve themselves alone this way. Meanwhile, I tried for the first time to analyze something complex in my first article in the global issues field — about Gaza.
I couldn’t say less than 15 pages, so I started writing a book. Not about Gaza, but about global problems, and I plan to share bits of research and reflections along the way in English on Medium and in Ukrainian on Друкарня. I’ll use it as a chance to learn to formulate for different audiences. It seems like it’s time to go beyond PryNadiyi blog, because I want to say more and more. Those interested — subscribe, support, talk with me, I’m always open and ready to help.
Naming is Not Universal —
This is just one tool to ease the path toward understanding that we are one whole, and everything is interconnected, intertwined, and testifies to one another. An attempt to give form to that which has none.
The world is infinitely fluid. Until we are ready to flow with it, we need structure — that’s what our mental health clings to. So when it’s hard to figure things out, we name and put them on shelves. The danger is that sometimes we start living on those shelves, in the black-and-white categories we’ve created ourselves. It’s simpler that way.
Simone Weil offered another tool: not to classify, but to surrender and observe. Not to solve, but to see what happens — to endure the flow.
The internet is a small model of the world. An intertwined mesh growing in all directions without beginning or end, where any point can connect with any other. Any theses, conclusions, logic, and hierarchy from this perspective are torn out of context. What will happen if we leave it all as it is? Deleuze says to spread out, but I still like structuring and find satisfaction and relief in form — so let it be. Deleuze structured as well, just didn’t lock the structure with conclusions — leaving space.
Work Without Visible Results
There are people who pick on others because they also like to structure — whether in black and white or like me. That’s okay, I understand and don’t worry, although support would feel mush better. But I myself cannot shake off my own mind and work like an ox without neither payment nor much of visible results. Except for finding a name. Studies, blogging, writing books, endless document submissions and bureaucracy, feeble attempts to gather it all and adapt to life changing at the speed of light.
And at the same time, breathe. Convince myself that just being is enough. Unfortunately, I don’t believe it, though I would love to. We don’t question the value of a sleeping child. But for me, being alive means using my potential, influencing, making the world better. Being an insect is horrible. I know nothing and can do nothing, but want to know and do everything. Ecclesiastes has been pestering me. But that’s how it is now, dear Mr. Ecclesiastes. One day I will relax and become pure love.
I’m glad I’m not at the point where nothing happens — because I was there, and it’s a terrible feeling. So let it be for now, let there be an attempt to bring structure out of chaos, to catch the fluid world in my own nets. Maybe one day I will reach the Swedish jag är — det räcker (“I am — that’s enough”). For now, I’m overwhelmed with choice, where my life is an endless “to-do” list, where it’s not just about self-realization, but about realizing all possible scenarios to the maximum. I no longer need to decide what to do as in my teenage years — rather to choose what not to do.
Everything Has Its Time
One thing we often forget is that each of us is on our own path. What we say and do is what must happen at this moment for us.
Recently, I came across a dialogue with myself from ten years ago, where I wrote that I find those strange people alien — the ones too interested in what happens on earth, who read the news, try to make the world better, those weird active people! I want to be just a person who chatters and never achieves anything. I was 26 when I wrote that. I was flying in clouds, being interested in philosophy, art, and religion, writing poetry and dreaming of dying.
Having a child grounded me incredibly and made me interested in what’s happening around, and now I’m one of those who read the news and want to change the world. It happened naturally; no one in the world could have convinced me then to think differently. Nor could they now. It’s also important that this change happened through the body; for me, it’s an important testimony to its significance, participation, instrumentality. Ten years ago, the body was just a form, a prison to escape. When things can’t be changed by thoughts or words, they can be changed through the body. Even writing helps me formulate thoughts. I no longer want to die — it’s an incredible feeling. Those who were there will understand. You can approach it through thought, emotion, or action — if one doesn’t work, another will.
Releasing Anger
We don’t have much control over such things; everything happens naturally, when it has to, as it has to — that’s how it works. One could talk about the need to be gentler with each other, but I would rather speak about authenticity and observance as the only things worthy of special attention. I cannot force Russian speakers to switch to Ukrainian, but I can ask them not to speak to me in that triggering language and to stand up and leave when I hear “no.” That’s if it’s ecological. But lately, I see no reason not to hiss, roar, or even vomit, because for many, that’s clearer, and I won’t have to spend a long time afterward reprocessing restrained negative energy inside myself. To express through the body at the moment when you want to express through the body — that is wonderful. One radical psychotherapist even suggests living this way and framing it ecologically. (Radical Honesty)
Organizing Chaos
I couldn’t live without a notebook. How else would I know what is important and prioritized, and what isn’t, what to do now and what later? The notebook is another support for me, my chaos neatly arranged on shelves. I no longer seek balance in all of this, but rather a rhythm where I am a lively young horse, not an overworked old nag. Or I can be a Spiderwoman.
There was time when I would wake up thinking, “oh no, not another day” (if you’re there now — hugs, write to me, come for coffee) — now I cannot accept the end of the day in which nothing fit again. Maybe one day I’ll live to the Swedish “jag är – det räcker” (“I am – that is enough”). But for now — I am, just as I am, with countless projects and days where nothing fits. And that is actually almost enough.
Literature
Gilles Deleuze – Difference and Repetition
→ For those who want to dive deeper into thinking beyond the dichotomies of good/evil, guilty/not guilty.
Hannah Arendt – The Origins of Totalitarianism
→ About how avoiding personal responsibility hands us over to authoritarian schemes.
Viktor Frankl – Man’s Search for Meaning
→ About inner freedom even in conditions of total powerlessness.
Bruce T. Perry, Oprah Winfrey – What Happened to You?
→ A contemporary book about how childhood trauma shapes adult reactions.
Muriel James, Dorothy Jongeward – Transactional Analysis with Gestalt Experiments
→ Integration of the inner child, adult, and parental aspects (based on transactional analysis).
Irvin Yalom – Schopenhauer as Medicine
→ A novel about psychotherapy leading to accepting oneself as a responsible subject.
Brené Brown – Dare to Lead
→ About vulnerability as the foundation of strength — and how responsibility grows from it.
