LidiaBabenko

The three stages of growing up

The first is a support to external rules. I am small and weak, and the world is big and complicated. More mature and experienced people tell me what rules should be lived by. I listen with an open mouth, I absorb, I try to comply, and I'm ashamed when I don't work. And so I learn to live in accordance with external morals.

The second one is the pillar of internal rules. I'm finding that some of the rules I swallowed don't work and is fundamentally ruining my life. Some of these are terribly unfair and toxic and some are just plain stupid. And then I begin to slowly digest them, to make amendments and changes. I'm gradually developing my own set of rules - inner morals - and learning to trust myself.

The third one is the pillar of reality. Based on myself and my own morals, I find that any rule is a huge simplification and limitation of the real picture. In most situations, there is no perfect "right answer" - there are only numerous "for" and "against", and I can choose. More precisely, I can find that I choose so in some situations, in others - edak, and there are no rules for that. I am learning to trust not only myself, but also the world I live in, where there were no universal rules, and there cannot be.
But damn sometimes I wish they were.

Andrei Yudin