christmas can be a difficult time.
it doesn’t matter how much therapy you’ve done, or how many books you’ve read, self-help podcasts you've listened to. it doesn’t matter how good you feel in your own skin, how many positive thoughts you think, or how good you look. it doesn’t matter how old you are, how wise and mature and intelligent and successful.
when you enter the family home and inhale the turkey smell, you instantly transport into a vulnerable, shy, needy kid, longing for your parents' approval.
the good news is that it happens to everyone, regardless of age. everyone is messed up by their family — in one way or another. the bad news is that there’s nothing you can do about it.
my therapist told me how she finally felt her best in years. she had just turned forty and began to feel like an adult, probably for the first time in her life. she forgave her father, she let go of grudges towards her mother.
and then she went home for christmas.
even though, i keep thinking about what my mother told me. her father — my grandfather — died from a heart attack earlier this year. he was 67.
ridiculously young. still, this being russia, where the male life expectancy caps at 66, he seemed older. during his last years — when i had already left the country with no idea whether i’d be ever coming back — he became increasingly ill, fighting high blood pressure, severe headaches, multiple surgeries, and shortness of breath that occurs only when you’re carrying an extra 50 kg on your belly. most days, he didn’t leave the apartment, preferring to spend his days watching propaganda on tv or making dirty jokes to his other woman.
my mother, being the daughter in the family — as opposed to a son, my uncle, who is six years younger than my mother — had few opportunities to connect with her dad. sexism runs rampant in most post-soviet families. my mother was lucky if her father acknowledged her presence; the idea of “quality time” was almost, with rare exceptions, unheard of.
and yet.
my own feelings about my grandfather passing aside, when he died this august, my mother was crushed. she became a different person overnight. i saw firsthand the meaning of the phrase that says you only become a grown-up when you bury your parents.
now, every time my sister or i call my mother to bitch and moan about our father, she keeps reminding us — with no judgement — that at least we have one.
because i don’t, she says.
if you’re young and lucky that nobody died in your family, it’s hard to imagine that happening. but weirdly enough, when it does, it’s a shock at first, but also a reminder that a) these things will now be happening; and b) one day, even the people closest to you will die.
as one comedian said, in a moment of dark humour, “the death of your extended family is death on training wheels” — a sort of preparation for the time when the really bad deaths would come: your parents or, god forbid, your kids.
so yes. family sucks. in fact, it can be the worst.
but it also can be — as i recently read — an exercise in loving people you don’t necessarily like. it’s the ultimate empathy test.
because what makes family the worst also makes it the best.
love.
too much, too little, too straight, too skewed, too conditional, too unconditional love, love, love. all the pain and all the joy and all the misunderstanding and suffering and anxiety is the product of love.
but now christmas is over and so is 2023 — almost. we can go back to our old routines and be ourselves again, free from the scrutiny of our families and the never-ending mind-screwing need for their approval.
for me personally, this was an extremely difficult year; but it was also a year rich in life. because life is not always — rarely, actually — about pure bliss, no matter how often we are bombarded with these messages online.
life is also about loss, death, divorce, things happening in society you can’t control, personal achievements and disappointments, but ultimately: it’s all about your evolution as a person. the different versions, like an ios, that you’ve been and will be.
i don’t know about you but i can look back at the quarter of a century i spent on this planet and point to every growth point i have ever had — a moment when i physically felt as if i was becoming better, wiser, deeper, stronger, braver, more empathetic and humane — and show you a coincidental shit show that provoked that very growth.
it might be banal but it’s true: as humans, we grow through adversity, through shit storms and clusterfucks and moments when it feels like the world is falling apart and no new one is in sight.
and this is how i feel now, ending this year.
but i am also feeling a newfound appreciation for life that only comes when you lose too much too quickly.
i watch what’s happening to the world, to my piece of shit of a country; i look at my life, in which i have just lost 2 things that made me feel any sense of stability or purpose — my marriage and my job — and i look at the loss i’ve experienced this year, starting with my grandfather and then, a young daughter of a close family friend, i look at all of that and i see: there are much more important things in life.
there are much more important things than the ones younger people — current teenagers, or people in their early twenties — are pursuing now, under the spell of social media, crazy billionaires, and populist politics. there are things more important than degrees, savings, mortgages, portfolio size, and followers on instagram. there are things insanely more important than personal success, achievement, legacy, or any form of external self-validation, for that matter.
roughly, these things are: (1) the ability to love, empathise, connect with people; (2) having character — being a decent human being, (3) living an interesting life, led by self-honesty, curiosity, and perpetual pursuit of the truth about the world, yourself, and others.
call me naive, but this is what i am trying to optimise these days, if such things can even be optimised.
because in a world that slowly seems to turn into an armageddon, there are several options, really. especially for us, young folks, who will have to live in it.
we can either get depressed, endlessly doomscrolling the news or social media. we can live in denial and pretend that we live on a separate planet, pursuing success like it’s still 2015.
or we can acknowledge that what we’ve been doing so far doesn’t work.
that humanity as a whole and humans in particular have been a bunch of greedy jackasses who ruin everything they touch.
and then, we can decide to not be a jackass.
we can decide to live on our own terms. whatever those are for you.
you can decide to be you.
because honestly, if the world is falling apart, who gives a fuck.
merry christmas and a happy new year’s.
— s
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Thanks so much for this one Sergey and I am very sorry for all the stuff you are going through now. But you are absolutely correct, it is the really bad stuff, the shitstorm that we endure, that really taught me how to appreciate what is good, and to become a somewhat improved version of me. I learned to have more compassion and empathy and to try to be much less judgemental. I also learned what is really important and how to laugh, especially at myself :) So again thank-you and also for making me laugh, as when I opened this and read the title it was almost exactly what I was thinking at the time :)
Finally the sayings "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger" works for me , together with "This too shall pass" although at times I wanted to whack the person saying it ! Many thoughts and a virtual hug :)
I'm sending this to my daughter and partner, who are much more successful than I, who have questioned why I should retire now when I could be earning more money, and who found proof in our home videos that my parenting was no more ambitious than my career. Sometimes I try to warn them that the future will be very different than the one they are striving for, but why should they believe me when I keep my thermostat at 60F, rarely drive a car, and treat my yard like a groundhog haven? Did they notice their nephew having fun with their old wooden toys that I've neglected to box up and sell on eBay? Did they notice that their youngest sibling, who earns a tenth of what they do, gave her money to just causes and hand-made her gifts to them? It's okay if they didn't, actually. It's a joy to be with them, and they are always welcome here.