Once upon a time I lived, and everything was bad with me. I write directly, because everyone already knows this. At home, Sarah Bernhardt teased me for my gloominess, my colleagues — Tsarevna Nesmeyana, the rest simply wondered why I was so upset all the time. And then on my way I met a psychologist. His task was to teach me to live every minute and enjoy it.
I clung to the psychologist like a deaf old woman to the last hearing aid, and as a result of psychotherapy, I began to hear, see and smell everything that is happening around right now. As some patient of Kashpirovsky, whose scar has resolved, I declare: I was treated, and the psychologist did his job.
And now some people wonder why I’m so active, I can’t calm down and sit quietly. Instead of looking anxiously into tomorrow, I began to look into today with interest. But this, fir-tree sticks, had to be learned. Actually, you can only begin to learn relaxation, there is no limit to it, as to that perfection. And to justify myself, I’ll say that earlier it wasn’t just me, but the whole country was afraid to relax.
So, my summer holidays usually ended already in the first week of August, when my mother dropped meaningfully: «Soon to school.» It was assumed that the school should be hard to prepare. Draw the fields in new notebooks with red paste, stroke the tie, repeat — oh horror! — passed material.
In the kindergarten, they prepared for the first grade, at school — for a responsible choice of profession, at the university — for the «big life»
But all this was not the main thing. The most important were the installations: «rest, rest, but do not forget» and «you need to rest with benefit.» Because at the head of any corner in those days was the moral readiness for the coming trials. In the kindergarten, they prepared for the first grade, at school — for a responsible choice of profession, at the university — for the «big life». And when life began, when there was nothing to prepare for and I just had to live, it turned out that I was absolutely beyond my power.
And after all, everyone used to do this: they saved up for something, started savings books, put aside from their unfortunate hundred-ruble salary for a rainy day (which immediately came the next day). They stocked up on pasta in case of a war with the Americans, they were afraid of something, some “suddenly” and “you never know”, some planned difficulties and additional misfortunes.
As Shvonder sang in unison in the apartment above the head of the shocked Professor Preobrazhensky: “The harsh years are leaving, tati-tat-tati-tat, others will come after them, and they will also be difficult.” Type: you can’t relax, because neither the internal, nor even the external enemy is dormant. They build intrigues. «Be ready!» — «Always ready!». First we will overcome everything, and only then …
The permanent expectation of a bright future by tens of millions, several generations of people has not been ridiculed by anyone, but still not everyone knows how to live. Whether genetics is to blame or a difficult childhood, but for some — me, for example — only a specially trained experienced specialist and a long course of treatment could help in this sense. So everything is running.
What they are doing now: they live in debt, but they live today
Although many do well on their own. Somehow they reached it themselves, they understood: “Now or never!” It’s in the spirit of the times. Therefore, what they are doing now: they take loans, they buy everything, and then they either give it back or not. They live in debt, but they live today.
And some still doubt the correctness of this shortsightedness. And also frivolity. Lightness in general. Which, if we take a purely human, and not a state, military or business-strategic scale, is our only chance for happiness. And as it turned out, children’s writers, psychologists, philosophers, and even sacred books agree on this. Happiness, peace, harmony, joy, life itself are possible only here and now. And then nothing happens. «Later» does not exist in nature.
Again, advertisers (the best of whom calculate everything) have caught the trend and use it only in this way. In cheerful videos, I simply won’t save you from hooligan old women, respectable managers who decide to play naughty, aunts tearing off their heels and bathing in fountains …
Nobody works, everyone lives, enjoys, every now and then arranging breaks. “Shoes for this life!”, “Live — play!”, “Celebrate the moment!”, “Take everything from life!”, “Taste life”, and the simplest and most cynical from a pack of cigarettes: “Live in the present!” . In short, one does not want to live from all these calls to live.
Someone, in order not to suffer, needs to read philosophical books, but I had to write long and strangely with my left hand
However, that’s always the case with me. Just a little — the mood drops, and to live … no, I don’t want to. Did not want. I came into conflict with the ever-celebrating society, which had already grasped the very essence of the unbearable lightness of being. How did Madonna answer a stupid question for a journalist: “What is the meaning of life?” “In not suffering.” And it is right.
Only someone, in order not to suffer, needs to read philosophical books and develop their own philosophical squint, someone needs a bottle of Makhachkala vodka, but I had to write long and strangely with my left hand. This is such a technique. Write with your left hand all sorts of things, in the affirmative form. Try to get through to the subconscious. It’s like learning to write again, like learning to live again. It looks like a prayer, like poetry. “It is safe for me to live”, “I am safe to rejoice”, “I am happy here and now”.
I didn’t believe in it at all. All these statements could be attributed to me only by adding to each a huge particle NOT: «I am NOT free», «I am NOT safe to live.» And then it seemed to let go, it became easier for me to breathe, the smells and sounds returned, as after a faint. I came to love my breakfast, my perfume, my flaws, my new shoes, my mistakes, my loves, and even my job. And really dislike those who, after reading «20 ways to make yourself beautiful» in the «psychology» section of a cheap women’s magazine, condescendingly remark that «all these are woman’s troubles.»
For some reason, it never occurs to anyone to walk with a sprained leg, but living with a dislocated brain is considered the norm.
“Am I crazy, should I go to a psychologist?” Oh yeah! For some reason, it never occurs to anyone to walk with a sprained leg, but to live with a dislocated brain, poisoning the existence of oneself and others, is considered the norm. Like life in the eternal expectation of trouble and eternal unpreparedness for joy. So after all, it’s more familiar: bristle — and you won’t be taken by surprise!
Bristled people, bristled times, bristled relationships. But I won’t go back to any of this. I don’t want my life, like those summer holidays, to end in the midst of enjoying it, just because my brain is used to preparing for the worst.
“So that life does not seem like honey,” the boss liked to repeat, who, in order to cope with my good mood, had to load me with additional work. “This child will not cope with the hardships of life,” my mother sighed, looking at my little daughter, completely excluding the possibility that the hardships might not come.
“You laugh a lot today, as if you don’t have to cry tomorrow,” my grandmother noticed. They all had their reasons for this. I do not have them.
And it’s better to be considered an abnormal patient of a psychologist and write with your left hand for days, than to go deaf again, go blind and lose your joyful forebodings. Life must be spent. And if this is a loan, then I agree to any interest.