Plenty of people live in an invented world and run from their real problems. Every time I start working with what I actually have, I get stronger.
In 2019 I enrolled at a school of thinking called Apeiron.
At one of the seminars I heard a line that stuck with me:
“A gentleman’s highest virtue is to work with reality as it is.”
It lodged itself in my memory and I turned it over for a long time. On one hand, I sensed something deep in it that I could not quite name. On the other, it seemed obvious: everyone lives in reality and deals with it one way or another.
Only over time did I start to see clearly how many people live in a world of their own invention. They do not deal with their actual lives and actual problems, they run from them. Some dive into addictions of various kinds. Some bury themselves in work. Some just plan and strategise endlessly without ever taking a real step.
Take someone who knows they have an open health question but figures it will probably sort itself out. They are not ready to see the dentist, the oncologist, the gynaecologist. There is this hope that it will all just dissolve on its own.
Or someone works at a company they hate. They carry the idea of an interesting project or business in their head, but they are not ready to roll up their sleeves and build it. They tell themselves they lack the time, the money, that there are no decent people around, and that the country is in a difficult spot anyway.
Running from reality, and refusing to work with it.
In 2020 I bought my parents an apartment near my own. We faced a choice: a small place with a good renovation and appliances but further away, or a bigger place with no renovation, five minutes on foot. We took the unrenovated one nearby.
My parents moved out of a rental and into their own home. Naturally, every time I came over, the state of the place hit me like an emotional slap. For a while I comforted myself with the thought that in a couple of years I would do a full renovation in one sweep. Then, talking with my dad, I began to realise that this was mostly something I needed, not them. They were perfectly fine with it.
So I stopped hiding behind the idea of a big comprehensive renovation someday, and started making small improvements here and now. My father and I agreed to swap the wooden kitchen window for a plastic one. We put in a new water heater in the bathroom. I bought them a microwave and a mixer. We installed a backup power system for the blackouts. I upgraded my dad’s computer. I replaced the bathroom plumbing. I found them a housekeeper who cooks and cleans.
And that is how, in small steps, working with reality as it is, you gradually improve their living conditions as much as is currently possible given what they actually want.
I realised that every time I stop floating in the clouds and building castles in the air, and simply start working with what is in front of me, I get stronger. Yes, sometimes that reality is awful. But the less you run from it and the more you work with it, the more you come to like your life and the person you are becoming.
Do you see people around you hiding from reality instead of dealing with the open questions and problems in their lives? Do you sometimes, as I do, see that person in the mirror?