may

By Claude Monet

spring rain
the pity of one
who can’t write

— Buson

Dear reader,

The days are still getting longer, but that will change soon. The sun is still not up, but the sparrows are, and I hear their song in the yard. There’s this smell of yesterday’s rain in the brisk air, and the sky has this pale hue which won’t last long — just like this time that I have before regular obligations and duties, but I’m glad it’s like that. Constraints are a form of stress, but I welcome them, because I know that unbound freedom is an alluring trap that only promises but never delivers. It is easy and it makes no demands, which tells me everything.

I’m glad that this morning started with regular coffee, gentle piano music, and some writing; without a regular check of emails and Twitter, a start of another detox as I realized how much time I spend on it. I like to imagine what would happen if someone from the 1950s had a time machine and traveled to the present day and saw how I used the phone. “Wait a minute”, he would probably say, “you have a device in your pocket which lets you communicate with anyone in the world, basically free of charge, and instead of that you ‘doomscroll’? And you’re telling me that that’s normal, that that’s what most people are doing, as only one percent of people create, and maybe even less if ‘the Dead Internet Theory’ is correct? Good grief!” I would have trouble explaining my own passivity to him and I would have trouble explaining to him how widespread it is.

Maybe the hidden reason is the fact that apparently shame is what motivates my culture as opposed to guilt, which is the main motivator in the west. There’s this lingering fear of public ridicule, which might be the biggest reason why more people don’t explore their potential. Mary Oliver: “The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.”

I’ve read some advice suggesting that everyone should tweet more, because tweets are ‘free options’ — very limited downside for potentially unlimited upside. While I do agree with that, I think it’s good to have some distance from it first, before radically changing how I use it. But maybe that’s just an excuse for making some changes, one of my common pitfalls, as I like to analyze things a lot before taking action. The problem with that is that there’s never an end to an analysis. It’s a ‘short put option’ — very limited upside for potentially unlimited downside.

There are many things like that and another example is putting things under the rug. It’s the easiest and the most simple thing to do. Just ignore the problem until it magically goes away. But it comes with a cost because it’s a lie, not a lie towards somebody else, but towards myself. “Above all, don't lie to yourself,” said Dostoevsky, “The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”

Conflict avoidance is my lifelong partner and the more time I spend with it, the more I realize that it is a lie, that it comes with a hidden cost — since it requires no effort. The cost is the loss of respect, from oneself, which is not surprising, but also from others, which is. I know that my behavior is the result of my upbringing, but I reject Freud’s idea that childhood defines my destiny and embrace Adler’s that I can choose what effect it has on me. I learn slowly, but still, at least I learn.

Deep down in the depths, that’s where the truth whispers, and it doesn’t tolerate deception, however hard I try. Taking this truth seriously, listening to what it has to say, and doing things it commands might be the hardest thing in the world, but it’s the right thing to do, it’s my cross, my Stone of Sisyphus. Don’t lie to yourself, I repeat, as I throw myself in the fire.

I hear that the neighbors’ dogs have woken up and started their daily morning symphony. I am still just glad, as I remember all the mornings and nights in the city when I was woken by swarms of crows and their cackling. I appreciate their absence here, more than the people who haven’t experienced it. How often I take things for granted, without even realizing how lucky I am with what I have. Take everything for granted and become depressed, see beauty in everything and become divine. Photography as a road to the latter, but more on it some other time.

I hear the girls are up now as well. It’s time to go and start our morning ritual. I think more people would have kids if they knew how much richer life becomes after, but they haven’t experienced it and it’s hard to explain. I had an image of what being a parent looked like in my mind, but I wasn’t a parent, and the map is not the territory. We in Croatia have a tendency to complain about hardships, and it’s difficult to explain that these hardships come with a sense of gratefulness, because it’s both beautiful and hard at the same time. But that’s also a story for another time, and I shall end here because the duties call.

Yours,
SH