Matthew Perry died last weekend. (I must confess, I was about to write “Chandler” but stopped myself midway. Perry wanted his legacy to be more than a ‘90s sitcom. He was also a force for good, battling addiction most of his life and helping others, even through a game of pickle ball.) A few weeks before that, the second large local war broke out in the Middle East, exacerbating the already strained global political situation. In my personal life, things have also been difficult. A few months back, a close family member died. Last week, a family friend passed away—she was barely 19. My marriage, which almost collapsed earlier this month, has seen better days. Then, of course, there’s the ever-present reality of war, which feels far away from London. However, a phone call with someone from my family in either Russia or Ukraine—or a news segment about yet another rocket hitting my wife’s hometown—brings me back to reality.
All this is to say, 2023 officially sucks. Worst year ever. In fact, I can’t even recall the last time I said anything different. Since 2020, when the whole world froze and people in the West had to reassess their attitudes toward fragility, it seems like everything has been spiraling. With climate change and the upcoming presidential elections, which could redefine the global landscape, there are long-term, mid-term, and short-term threats looming over every one of us. Also, COVID is back. Last week, I took a test—first time since 2021—and yesterday, my professor messaged that our class was moving online because he tested positive. Nice.
And I keep thinking: Is it just me, or is the world turning to shit? Sometimes I feel like one of those older people who say, “In my time, things were different!” But somehow, it feels that when I was growing up, everything was different—more hopeful. As a teenager, spending my time between boarding schools in America and Moscow’s cafes, preparing for my SATs, starting small businesses, reading books about Steve Jobs, and watching “The Social Network,” I used to think that my generation was unique. When “Sapiens” came out, it reinforced my beliefs. Wars, poverty, death, pain—all were things of the past. The future belonged to the brave, the smart, the IT-savvy. The future was Bitcoin, AI, decentralization, and universal basic income. All we had to do was wait. After all, being young, time was on our side.
Of course, one can argue that I didn’t notice the true state of the world precisely because I was spending my time between boarding schools in America and Moscow’s cafes, preparing for my SATs, starting small businesses, reading books about Steve Jobs, and watching “The Social Network.” I had the naïveté of youth. After all, 9/11 happened when I was 3, and Crimea was illegally taken from Ukraine in 2014, the same year my family’s business collapsed and my parents got a divorce. I was 16.
Things weren’t all that rosy and peachy, but they seemed like it. When the 2008 financial crisis hit, I watched the CNN reports from the comfort of my California living room. When the Ukraine revolution started in 2013, commonly referred to as Maidan, I watched the footage of people throwing Molotov cocktails and burning tires and shrugged. As a teenager in Russia, I didn’t read the global news. I was isolated, ignorant, privileged, and up until 14, thought that Iran and Iraq were the same place but spelled differently.
But kids are naive for a reason: they don’t have enough data. If you were brought up in comfort, all you know is comfort. A few years back, I told my sister (22) that we have to be grateful for what we have because sooner or later, things will turn sour. The simple reason for that being: as more time passes, the probability that something bad will happen increases. People will die, wars will start, and who knows what else will happen, leaving you no choice but to deal with it and keep going. Everyone wants to live a long life, but few want to pay the price of increasing risk and uncertainty that a long life inevitably brings. Life is a comedy for the first few decades until it suddenly turns into a tragedy; ask anyone over the age of 50, and they’ll tell you.
In a certain sense, maturity is nothing but the accumulation of data. I remember growing up by what felt like several years over two days when my father left our family and I became “the man of the house” (whatever that means). Now, watching my mother cope with the pain and loss of her father, I see how it’s changing her. Similarly, the war in Ukraine has aged an entire nation. Just look at Zelensky’s photographs from right before Russia invaded in 2022.
Nobody chooses to feel pain, but sooner or later, everyone will experience a share of it, and it will change them.
However, waiting until pain comes is not the only option for personal growth. Pain is an unavoidable lesson, but there are ways to grow that don’t require pain, not necessarily, —the most obvious and effective being self-education and avoiding ignorance.
If you observe something happening in the world and feel that you don’t have an opinion or don’t understand what’s happening, you can start asking questions and venture out. By educating yourself, this new knowledge will not only make you a better, more mature, and empathetic person, but also open up opportunities you never knew existed.
If my generation is unique in one way, it’s that we are uniquely self-delusional. Our self-delusion takes the peculiar form of personal grandiosity. We resemble the main character in John Cheever’s famous short story, “The Swimmer,” who is determinedly original and has a vague and modest idea of himself as a legendary figure. Of course, everyone is different, but generally, my generation believes itself to be superior and entitled simply because we exist. We are lazy, arrogant, and ignorant. We scroll through social media feeds, seeking opportunities, lives, successes, fame, glory, and wealth as if selecting a toothbrush on Amazon. When these things don’t materialize, we become depressed and suffer from various mental illnesses. Perhaps the problem lies in the premise that success and wealth constitute a good or worthy life, and that our current lives are somehow insufficient.
I am going to finish this rant by leaving you with a thought.
Everyone talks about wanting a “better, truer life” for themselves, as if life were a test with correct answers. But what if this whole idea is backward? What if there is no perfect life besides the one you are already leading? What if this—whatever this is—is all you get, despite what an endless stream of books, social media posts, and TikTok videos suggest? What if all the great goals, plans, future opportunities, and dreams that you jot down in your journal and motivate yourself to achieve is all bullshit, and all we can do is what we can, where we are, with what we have, regardless of whether we like it or not?
This is not a defeatist strategy, as some might think. Thinking through these questions requires a humility that many people of my generation lack. There aren’t any other lives out there that we are supposed to be living except the one we are living. Future opportunities and future versions of ourselves are all illusions. All you have is what you have, and that is the best you can hope for at this given point in time. All you can do is accept that and move on, gradually building on that foundation, doing what you can to increase your knowledge, build empathy, and be a decent human being. That’s the philosophy; that’s the practice.
And then, the particular state of the world, either yours or on a wider scale, becomes less important.
If you enjoyed reading this, you can buy me a coffee. No pressure though.
Every generation has its challenges. I think people like to believe that we came here to try to have a nice life, but that's not exactly a soul journey. Still, I wish you happy times and plenty of love, along with the challenging, mind-fucking growth.
I am sad about Matthew Perry's death; addiction is god-awful.
I don't have any answers, really, about the world going to shit. I remember the 1973 Israeli war and how terrified I was at 17. My plan was to take all my record albums and head to the mountains. Not well thought out and of course I didn't have to (and I still have the albums). It did make me realize how important music was in my life. I have lived through a lot of crises since then and the most recent Gaza/Israeli tragedy began when my kids and I were on holiday in London. I saw many runners and wondered if you were one of them ;-) So while the world is going to shit, there are people carrying on with their lives, jobs, families; all the things. The juxtaposition is curious. So we had our holiday, enjoyed the kindnesses and returned home. In 11 days we only met one rude person. It was epic. This is rambling but the longer I live, the less I know. I think we just keep on, trying to make the best of the time we have been given. Somewhere(s) it's always going to shit. One would think we had learned better by now. (We walked through St James Park and I loved seeing the waterfowl...I am a bird and tree nerd. But no pigeon sat on my head).