How well we have been trained not to build long-term plans but to drop everything and recharge while there’s still a source. Level 8 short-term planning: we know exactly when we’re doing laundry and when the boiler and hairdryer are on. But we have no idea what will happen in a couple of months.
We’ve been taught to forget about real estate and, grabbing the cat in a carrier, go somewhere, anywhere. And to be happy there just to be alive. To be happy about things you never thought about before.
We’ve learned to flip cash for generators and pickup repairs, and I can’t even imagine how it would be if each of us said “the state promised to protect us, so let it protect us.” What would we do without the habit of flipping cash aside from taxes.
We’ve been taught to empathize and at the same time disconnect from empathy when the moral resource is zero. Taught to skim through something without fully engaging and simultaneously get fully involved in something that caught us.
I used to rush to help anyone with “need underwear,” but now it’s turned into irritation “Buy yourself underwear, damn it!”
I used to walk past the word “Kharkiv” calmly, but now, if there’s a choice to buy in Lviv or Kharkiv, I’ll buy in Kharkiv, they need it more.
Some little things you never thought about.
Heat in the radiators.
Water in the tap.
A bag of feed in reserve.
We learned that constants are not constant, that someone always has it worse than you.
We learned to share income with the Armed Forces of Ukraine and problems with each other.
And I would like to keep all these skills. Without the need to use them, but to keep them.
In reserve.
Just in case.
The former carelessness had its charm and sparkle, but household minimalists in Mariupol ate pigeons.
I don’t want to eat them.
But I want to know how to catch them. Just in case.
Collage: TSN
