iwasjustnotfollowingttheorder

[iwasjustnotfollowingttheorder]

My English teacher once said that life cannot always be good to you: sometimes you are benefiting from every decision you make, but then you get no luck at all. This cycle of luck is a very interesting thing to consider because you cannot be 100% sure, whether your idea will reach the success or it won’t be taken seriously by others. What I am trying to say is that this luck factor is unpredictable and you cannot rely on it all the way through your life path.

Cheryl Strayed who is the hero of this post is a 54 years old American writer. Her story of life is definitely not one of the easiest and sweetest you can think of: Cheryl were living a typical student life, when her Mother suddenly died from lung cancer at the age of 45. It was a great strike for Cheryl, she started to take drugs and very soon she was diagnosed with a heroin addiction. Still, she was writing poems and essays, expressing all her pain in these works. But what is truly interesting about her story is that she didn’t break under all these terrific circumstances that suddenly fell on her shoulders. Instead she understood that it was the breaking point of her life and she needed to make a change. This is the moment, when she quit her job as a waitress, packed a huge backpack and went on a long hike all alone. 1100 miles were in front and 26 years old Cheryl was ready to conquer them.

Many people connect her compulsive act with piligrimage. I cannot disagree, because she decided to take this unbelievable physical challenge because of her faith. But not religious faith, her faith in her mother’s love and her own strength gave her the force to move. Her own power of will was the only reason she completed this insane 1100 miles journey. And not a God, but Cheryl herself changed her life for good through all the suffering and tears she faced on her path.

For me this story became a great motivation as a reminder that you cannot be sure that you will become successful because of luck, but if you work hard, if your mind and your dreams are unstoppable than you have much higher chances of reaching the desired success. In the end of the post I’d like to remind you of a Dépêche Mode song “Personal Jesus”. Part of the text of the song is:

‘Reach out and touch faith

Your own personal Jesus’

As English is not my mother tongue, usually it is hard for me to understand the text of English songs, so I thought that this part of the song sounds another way:

‘Reach out and touch faith

YOU ARE YOUR PERSONAL JESUS’

Which is way better in my opinion.

[iwasjustnotfollowingttheorder]

'Pilgrims' by Josef Brodsky

Past altars and stages, past temples and taverns, past classy graveyards, past street market’s jabber, past peace, and past woe, past Mecca and Rome, burned by the sun’s blue glow, the earth the pilgrims roam. They’re heavily injured and hunchbacked, they’re hungry and almost naked, their eyes are full of sunset, their hearts are full of daybreak. The deserts are singing behind them, sheet-lighting breaks out abruptly, up above the stars are igniting, and birds are screaming gruffly: that the world will remain the same, yes, indeed, the same, dazzling with snowy game, with fondness its unlikely name, the world will remain underhanded, the world will remain forever, perhaps it can be comprehended, it has no limits, however. Which means it will make no sense to believe in yourself or Lord. …And the things that remain are, hence, the illusion and the road. All sunsets remain in-service, all daybreaks are still in splendor. The soldier will muck earth’s surface. The poet will be its defender.

To be honest, I can't call myself a big fan of poetry. For me, a visual interpretation of beauty is much more pleasing than a verbal one, even knowing that it is much more primitive. Even so, the subject of my blog today will be an analysis of Joseph Brodsky's poem, The Pilgrims.

The poem begins with a monotonous anaphora which describes the long and gradual journey of the pilgrims, who do not use planes, or cars which can take them anywhere in the world many times faster, preferring them to good old-fashioned walking. The author goes on to describe the travellers themselves, using epithets and metaphors to describe the condition of these unfortunate and road-ravaged people in as much detail as possible. Their images involuntarily appear before your eyes and you unevoidably ask yourself: what force can make a person leave everything familiar behind in order to embark on a gruelling journey on foot? But despite the hopelessness of the situation, Brodsky uses the antithesis to make it clear to the reader that despite the pilgrims' physical state, which is undoubtedly fading, symbolised by the sunset, their soul and thoughts are just beginning to bloom, like the morning dawn. The personification that makes the birds talk to the pilgrims undoubtedly refers us to the people who openly bewail the pilgrims' actions, vehemently declaring that their entire journey is pointless and the world will remain the same. Their suffering cannot change anything, or make anyone better off, so the purpose of their journey is an illusion. The poem concludes with an antithesis that demonstrates humanity from two opposing sides. The soldier, destined to kill and be killed and thus become material for the fertilization of the earth, on the other hand the poet, who only writes, but is of far greater value to the culture of our planet.

After reading this poem several times, I began to look at it from a different angle. The Pilgrims are not the protagonists of the story, but mere observers who have chosen the road as their sense of life. Even if their faith is an illusion and the closest thing to them is the road, their lives give meaning to the silly birds who never stop trying to change their minds about their stupidity. And they really have no effect on the land itself: wars are still going on, fertilizing it with soldiers, genius poets are still being born, endorsing it with ideas.

Thank you for your time in reading it!

[iwasjustnotfollowingttheorder]

Probably the best way of expressing your faith 

meaning of life, and that is why one must choose one's faith with great care and caution.

Unfortunately, in our day faith is very often used as a method to fool people. Faith is used to negotiate wars that have no objective reason to be fought. Many people use faith as a cover just to make money, while others take their faith too extreme, to the point where they are willing to harm themselves or others for the sake of it. I don't consider myself a religious person, particularly because of the reasons I mentioned above, but that doesn't mean that religion is all lies and has no right to exist.

My topic for today will be the peligrimans. These are people who go on long journeys around the world, invoking their faith, to purify their soul and mind, sacrificing their physical suffering, during a long hiking adventure. And surprisingly, I was enthusiastic about the idea, because faith doesn't drive people to kill or take money from the poor, but to go on fascinating journeys that give them peace and clarity of mind, which nowadays are very hard to come by through a layer of easy sources of dopamine, like Instagram, tic-tac-toe, and music. All these distractions are absent during your adventure, which is what makes it so unusual for modern man - your thoughts will be at one with you.

Of course, you might say that in today's fast-paced world, it's simply not feasible to carve out a month free from work and school to go hiking, even if you realise all the perks. And I thought the same, I won't hide it. But on the pilgrim routes you will be expected by private monasteries which will not investigate your faith, or try to impose theirs, but simply offer to spend the night and share a meal with fellow pilgrims in a friendly manner. In this way the heads of the monasteries support the pilgrims completely free of charge.

And the pilgrims are travellers who want to discover totally new places on our planet without being distracted by all the information rubbish that fills our lives today and are ready for any interesting encounters along the way. To me, it sounds like one of the best expressions of faith I've ever heard of and I might even want to join in.

Thank you for reading!

[iwasjustnotfollowingttheorder]

Vietnam Veterans refused to clean up the house after the party

Think back to the most incredible party you've ever been to. The fun lasted all night, until morning. The next day comes. You have a terrible headache, and your brain is trying hard to figure out where you were and what you did last night. When you open your eyes, you see your friends scattered around the room, unconscious. Through an inhuman effort, you get up and look around the apartment. The walls are stained and dented, the table is broken in half because someone danced on it, and the front door is not there at all. You are horrified, because the apartment belongs to your friend, who asked you to be careful, because his parents will arrive in a day. How would you feel in front of him? Would you be able to accept the guilt and help him fix it, or would you blame it on the other guys drinking with you, who are in the same position as you. 

Now, imagine that instead of alcohol, your mind was clouded by propaganda, screaming loudly about national duty and the importance of unity and national culture. That it is you who are important to protect the homeland. And just a few years later, you wake up with a pain in your head and find that you were part of a mass murder, which had absolutely no purpose other than to eradicate certain people for the sake of the occupation of their land, or the total depopulation. Half of your friends are long dead, so they can hardly answer for this terrible mistake. So what will your actions be? 

Today I would like to talk about American veterans who took part in the Vietnam War, who have decided to return to Vietnam, but this time without the obsession to secure their country, but as ordinary tourists. Admittedly, I have no respect for veterans, because when you are drafted into a war (I won't even consider volunteering for a war) you always have a choice. This choice is different, depending on the country of which you were lucky enough to be a citizen. But even the most difficult and extreme choice is kill or be killed. And let us analyze this point very well. Two soldiers of different countries are looking at each other. If both choose to stay alive but to kill - both shoot, both are dead. Suppose only one of the soldiers agrees to kill. In that case, he may consider himself a good man, having killed his enemy, but in several hours he also will be killed from the person who made the same choice. If each of them refused to kill a man, on pain of his own death - both soldiers stay alive! This is why veterans-people who agreed to kill-are not rewarded with respect in my mind. Before watching the material, I was extremely encouraged by the possibility of accepting my mistake, even if it is not correctable, but what I saw threw me into shock... 

Each of the visiting veterans refused to help his friend clean the apartment that they had all had so much fun trashing. Each of them justified himself by all the forces, by the actions of the state, which in the end, from what they said, turned out to be correct. It was genuinely painful for me to watch this report, because in my country right now there is a war, which is exactly the same as the Vietnam War is 100% promoted by propoganda, and imagining that in 50 years, on the territory of the affected state of Ukraine, which I hope already begins its way to prosperity, will come a minibus conservative goons who so violently bombed me and my family and say: "Well, see, they live well now, so we have not bombed them for nothing. "

[iwasjustnotfollowingttheorder]

Positive psychology and does it really affect your life

Yesterday at school, our English teacher showed us a Ted Talk, about positive psychology and how modern psychologists are dealing not just with problems of miserable people, but also with the task to make everyone happier with the help of technology.

To be honest, the Talk was extremely boring. It lasts 30 minutes and even though, the speaker - Martin Seligman, who is a famous American psychologist, looking like Tom Hanks in his worst days, tried to do his best, the speech had no energy, that would keep the audience alive till the end of it. Then, our class was given a task to write a blog, reflecting the Talk we just heard, which is what I am doing now.

My own Blog is a painful topic for me... I had many thoughts and plans about starting a YouTube channel, but they never went further than just an idea. Too Many hesitations and drawbacks immediately appeared in my head. I was insecure and thus chose to stay on one place doing nothin, because it always feels safe. Which incredibly comfortable connected with the topic of the Martin Seligman's speech, don't you think? Negative thoughts and emotions were my mental barrier that destroyed every idea of self development and growth.

Referring to Martin's words, there are three categories of a 'Happy Life' which is a goal of many people, including me:

Pleasant life - the main idea is to receive as much pleasure as possible.

Good life - unlike the pleasant life, your goal is not an instant pleasure, but the flow. A long process of working on one project or idea to reach a desirable result. It is normal to feel no pleasure during the flow.

Meaningful life - the idea is to feel good from knowing, that you did something helpful and important today. Thus you can evidently suggest your happiness and worth, clearly seeing that your life has sense.

Good and Meaningful life is my goal to achieve. I have nothing against pleasure in my life, but the feeling of pleasure is a chemical reaction, which has interesting characteristics. The more you feel pleasure, the harder it is for you to feel it again and even if you feel a great pleasure, it will quickly disappear. Needless to be mentioned that drugs have the same characteristics. I want to find my flow and follow it, because I am that kind of a person, who is able to do nothing for the whole day and then feel completely miserable about it for the next two. My dream is to find a passion that I will adore and work on it every day and to certainly know that every day I live isn't ridiculously wasted.

From the last paragraph you can think that I am a very mindful person, which is simply not true. I am just a lazy adolescent, who can easily spend 2 hours in a row, scrolling fucking Instagram, but sometimes, the voice of reason in my head asks me: 'Man, what's the purpose of your stupid existence?' and I have no clue to this question. That's why I want to split it to many easier questions: 'What's the purpose of your day?'. Which I will answer easily.

Thank You for reading!