I had promised myself to dream up some sustainable and livable world for my son in 2080, but this will have to wait. Today, I learned about the life and philosophy of Ikkyū, a 16th century japanese zen master. It started with a morning podcast with Michael Meade, who was speaking about the Kairos and quoted the monk:

How many times do I have to say it?

There is no way not to be

Who and where you are.

Ikkyū was one of the most unconventional figures in the history of Zen. In the time when Zen was politicized and commercialized (apparently, in 16th century Japan, like in 21st century Turtle Island, people found ways to make profit of everything). Ikkyū was among those who resisted the weaponization of Zen and its contortion into a rigid academic and hierarchical structure and insisted that Zen was a lived and living experience.

From reading his story, it is hard to understand whether Ikkyū was a show-off, a madman or a humble genius. In all likelihood, he was all three. And if I’m honest, Ikkyū sounds more like a mythical archetype, than a real man. There is a number of these fascinating rebellious geniuses: Diogenes, the founder of Hassidism Baal Shem Tov, Ukrainian travelling philosopher Grygory Skovoroda. Jesus of Nazareth could probably be put in the same category. These men remind us that true freedom and enlightment require radical imagination and the courage to break away from the system. Ikkyū also reminded me that one thing I can never stop being is myself.

Other than that, I spent my day checking the updates about ICJ case agains I*rael and reading about western powers bombing Houthis. I’ve been taught to think about Houthis as pirates and terrorists, but now I’m questioning the biases I’d internalized.

Today, during the webinar on Inner Development Goals, the presenter asked us to participate in the activity to illustrate long-term multigenerational thinking and decision-making. He asked us to imagine the youngest person that we are close to and the oldest person. We were to reflect on what the world was like when the oldest person was the age of the youngest and what it will likely be when the youngest will get to the age of the oldest. Also, he asked us to imagine what we would like the world to be at that point of time.

Naturally, I thought about my almost-five year old son and my seventy-one year old mother, not because she’s the oldest person I know, but she’s the one closest to me. 

My mother was born one year before the end of the reign of Joseph Stalin (I had never realized that before!) in a small Ukrainian town called Radomysl. When my mother was the age of my son, she was growing up in a country ruled through oppression, terror and ideological brainwashing. It must have been the time when the survivors of the GULAGs were slowly returning to their places of origin. It was a time when the USSR and the USA were racing towards sending the first man to space. It was also the time when my mother’s family couldn’t afford simple things like a washing machine or a refrigerator. They had running water, but the toilet was outside. My mother told me that her biggest dream was to have a store-bought doll -only her Jewish friend had such a luxury, she had to make do with a home-made ragdoll.

Yet, it was also the time when they lived simply and sustainably. When I was young, my mother used to take me to Radomysl to visit her aunts (her own mother had passed away before my birth), so I remember the houses and the yards vividly. The houses had no front yards. The back of the house was facing the street, whereas the front entrance faced the backyard. There was a chicken coop, some fruit trees, berry bushes and strawberries and many rows of sensible vegetables: tomatoes, cucumbers, cabbage, carrots and, of course, beets. People who had space planted potatoes. Potatoes and cabbage were synonymous with Ukrainian survival not only during my mother’s childhood, but also during mine. At the edge of the vegetable patch people would plant corn and sunflowers. People hauled most of their food from the local market (shops were truly miserable). In the summer, they made jams and preserves- it wasn’t some kind of hipster utopia, just simple survival. 

My son was born in one of the most prosperous countries in the world one year before the global pandemic. He is growing up in the time and place where the stores have every kind of fruit and vegetable in any season, where Netflix serves him entertainment à-la-carte at will, where distance and time difference almost disappeared thanks to advanced technology. It is also the world where the ecosystems are dying, the facism is coming back from the oblivion, the inequality of growing and genocides are happening in front of our eyes. My son will reach the age of my mother in 2080. As I type this date, I have a vague sense of dread and no desire to dwell on the details. Will there be glaciers? Virgin forests? Life in the ocean? What will the temperatures be like? Will there be snow? Tornadoes? Will he be able to vote? Will there be a nuclear winter after some power-crazed male finally pushed the button? I do not idealize my mother’s childhood, but somehow it sounds less dire than my son’s old years.

I will take a break now and tomorrow I will try to think up the world I want in 2080.

In this darkness something is emerging. I can’t name it, I struggle to describe it or to make out its contours, but I can feel it. There is something being born.

I wish I could get under covers and stay there until April. No, until March, until the sap starts running in trees.

There is a winter storm raging outside. For my old performance-oriented self, snow storm was a distraction, an irritant putting in danger my carefully laid plans. For my new self, it is a reminder of who I am in the universe. I am not in control. I am not there to succeed at all cost.

Today we are gathered and see that the cycles of life continue. There are no straight lines, just cycles.

For the first time of my life I feel humble and grateful to be humble.

I don’t remember ever feeling so lost, lonely and disconnected at the start of a working year. I can only list the symptoms, without trying to analyze and understand them. On this first “back to office” day I felt: indifferent, discouraged, misunderstood, frustrated, resigned, “just push through it”, happy to realize it’s 12pm and I can take a break, even more indifferent, detached, “just leave me alone,” “why did I even bother to say anything,” and honestly genuinely scared of the prospect of going to the office tomorrow and facing all the small talk, how are you’s and unmitigated enthusiasm of the people who delude themselves into thinking that the new year somehow means a clean slate. I guess I should add “mean” to my list of symptoms. I don’t know if it’s a burn-out, a midlife crisis, a late-onset neurodivergence (is that even a thing?) or a sign of something darker, deeper and more collective. One thing I do know: I don’t want to ask for help or have to explain myself, but I do want to understand what is eating me and I need someone to get there.

In the past 127 days I’ve experienced

The death of a friend

The death of a black and white cat called Echo

The death of another friend’s nine-year old son in a freakish accident

The death of Israeli teenagers at a music festival

The death of countless Palestinian children

following the death of Israeli teenagers

as if the latter somehow atoned for the former

The death of a Ukrainian poet on the frontlines

of the war that I once had thought would last only a couple of weeks

but now I feel as if it would last forever, until it swallows the every last one of us.

Nothing will ever make any of it right

Nothing will ever atone

So, instead of fighting over who of us hurts the most

Can we sit together in wordless mourning

In an ancient ritual of sadness, love and humanity.

Fresh snow makes everything better. Brighter, lighter, whiter, more bearable. Today, I am grateful for fresh snow like never before. Today, I am grateful for a walk in dimming twilight, for the freshness of crisp air. Today, I was grateful for the privilege to turn off news and social media. To live, for a day, without war.

In the evening, I opened my Facebook feed and learned that the poet Maxim Kryvtsov perished in battle. He was 33. Judging from the photos, he had green eyes and almost unbearably handsome face. I didn’t know who Maxim was, had no idea that his poetry book was voted one of the best Ukrainian books of 2023. I had no idea he lived and now he’s dead and I feel the pain together with many people who loved him and whom I love. I didn’t know his name, but I knew his poetry – it appeared on my Facebook feed from time to time, reposted by friends. His poem about Bucha massacre, God, I must have read it a dozen times and cried every time I read it. Until tonight, I didn’t know who wrote the poem that made me cry. Now the people this poem was written about are gone and now the beautiful man who wrote about them is gone too. And with everyone gone, who will remain?

Today my body asked for rest, so I tried to listen.

It is a quiet day. According to the old calendar, today is Svyat Vechir – Orthodox Christmas Eve. Ukrainians no longer celebrate Christmas in January, but it’s good to remember. Maybe, the day still has some old magic.

I love noticing small things in which my children resemble me. Today, I have noticed my son following the beat of the music during his skating class. The skating rink soundtrack is wholly unremarkable, it is there for background only, but my son was nodding and shimmying while trying to keep steady on his skates. It made me smile and feel that particular tenderness one feels when one sees oneself reproduced in a tiny human being. He notices the soundtrack the way I do and one he does I just can tell it makes everything better and lighter. I wonder if he, when he becomes older, would prefer, like me, the serendipity of an accidental song overheard in a café or on a radio to a carefully curated unsurprising playlist. If he will keep his sound down and his earphones off for a chance to overhear something and get inspired. I hope he does.

It looks like it’s finally really properly snowing. Nine times out of ten the snow starts after dark, as if it wants to take its time to prepare a proper surprise. Or maybe, it just likes to have a few hours to lay quietly, in perfectly even layer, before the dog paws, human feet and car tires mess up the perfection. Maybe, tomorrow the snow will be think enough to sled.

Today, we didn’t change from our pyjamas even when we went for a walk. Just piled the snow suits and jackets and layers of soft cotton and wool on top of the flannel and went outside to check if the little brook in the city park froze over. There were very few people walking. I doubt that the return of the cold scared them, so it must be the return to work that kept them inside. The winter pause is one of those times when I feel acute, tender anticipation of an end, like on vacation and in the last days of August and almost every day in October and even in Spring, when each flower’s season lasts for only a short while. It is always too short, always passes too quickly, always leaves too many memories, even when these memories are only of lazy days and long evenings and mornings when one doesn’t have to rush anywhere. I will never (I hope) understand settler American obsession with DOING something with every free minute. What did you do on weekend? What did you do on a break? This question used to make me anxious. Now I simply reply NOTHING. The point is precisely to do nothing, or not do anything. To stop, slow down, cease, lay back.

So, just for myself, let me list the list of nothings I did today:

fed my children breakfast

made myself a coffee and spent about 45 minutes sipping it and reading Jenny Odell’s Saving Time (finished Chapter 2)

played Dobble and Snakes and Ladders with kids (lost both)

made grilled cheese sandwiches and coleslaw for lunch

went for a walk with Elise (Julien refused and stayed at home) talked about climate change and whether people should have kids at all – I wonder if I am raising an activist or a nihilist and where is the line

came back home to discover Julien asleep on the couch

made hot chocolate for Elise and played chess with her (didn’t exactly loose, but would have lost anyway)

spoke to my mom on FaceTime

did a 5k on a treadmill while kids watched a cartoon

read some more of Moon of the Crusted Snow (it doesn’t get better and I wonder whether I should keep on, skim the rest of the book or abandon it altogether)

hit up dinner and then read to the kids before putting them to bed

also, checked my LinkedIn quite a few times – a gesture that becomes more and more meaningless and annoying.

Overall, well done.

I can’t imagine ever working during the two weeks of Christmas school break ever again. And, to be honest, I don’t feel remotely ready to go back to dusty office carpets and mandatory small talk in three days. I love this pause for many reasons.

Not rushing my children in the morning and giving them freedom to decide their daily activities. Not caring if we do nothing, if the day is not productive or “successful.” I have discovered, to my astonishment, that one can only “waste” time if one approaches it from an extractive perspective. The concept of waste can only exist in opposition to the concept of value. One cannot waste time by breathing, thinking, daydreaming or playing. It is called existence.

Not caring how I look. I have had body image issues for as long as I remember myself. I have a clear memory of my mother’s friend giving me my first diet and exercise plan at the age of seven, but I suspect that people had told me that my body was “wrong” even before that age. Because of the way I’d been taught to hate my body, dressing and styling myself to the point where I remotely like the way I look takes a great amount of energy.

Not caring what people think of me, not caring IF people think of me (most of them don’t and it’s alright). Freeing myself from virtue signaling and the urge to prove that I am right, and getting rid of most social media apps. It’s an uphill battle.

Not spending my daylight hours in front of my computer screen.