7. Why I Am so Withdrawn

The outside world is not our home because we wouldn’t need to build houses where everyone wants to have their personal space if it were. Our fragile bodies need care, which can only come from self-love. 

Our heads are our true homes. That’s what I think.

I want my home to be a healthy place and, since no one bothers to clean it, It is my job to keep it neat. 

Like many people, I’ve experienced cognitive dissonance related to the difference between what I’ve been taught and what I could experience quite often. Like many people, I have fought with the world in my head during countless sleepless nights and long showers. My thoughts swarmed like bees in a hive, secreting their dubious honey. Bees stung me, and I tried to fight back: it is difficult not to be a mirror image of the interlocutor.

The war has to end in my head! How do I end the war in my head? My head must not become an apian world. Please, go to your hive, you buzzing creatures!

Every battle has convinced me that conflict arises when people choose their comfort, not the common good.

I’m fighting in my head for myself by standing for the common good and finding the way out of the cognitive impasse. Realizing it was like discovering Archimedes’s law of buoyancy, “Eureka!”

I have rephrased it for convenience: a body immersed in conflict is subject to a buoyancy force, equal to the volume of conflict splashed out by the body. The more you fuel the conflict, the longer you swim in it. The more individuals you affront, the more people will push you away.

My solution for ending the war in the head is to go through self-dignification.

I need emotional stability because I have to be a grand representative of the species Homo erectus, but bees don’t care about being sublime, they just want to find nectar to produce honey. I have to let them buzz. Oh, dear!

Why is the emotional field so important to me? Calliope, the muse of eloquence and epic poetry, avoids fuss: she only wants to talk to the dignified. Quarrels don’t make greatness and the muses will abandon me. I swear.

I write not only for the sake of mere writing, and practicing logical thinking and language, but for the peace of mind whether it’s mine or that of one of my readers. 

Thought is aeriform and therefore transitory. To secure it, I need to write it down and then it can be developed into an idea about people, nature, art, or how to handle a complex situation. 

Sometimes, thoughts are sent by the muses to create literary masterpieces. Anyone can try themselves in writing if they are willing to rise above vanity, which is possible only if you can organize your personal space well. You’ve got to watch your back to have time to figure out the plot.

On the other hand, people who don’t write don’t understand why you are so withdrawn. Having not written down a single thought about their lives, people who resigned themselves to an apian mind are greedy for everything at once - a good husband/wife, family, children, and career. You can succeed in multitasking only after a lot of trials. How many times in your lifetime are you ready to restart a family or career? Meanwhile, being great is just one task that can be practiced daily from scratch.

I don’t condemn those who want everything at once: they have such reasons as advancing economically and making their little world a better place not because they love everyone and everything, but because they want specific people to feel comfortable in this world. Who are these special people? For whose benefit do they disregard the common good? If you think it doesn’t matter, think again. 

In the long run, your detachment from the community may become a problem when humanity faces adversity and starts questioning everyone’s adherence to human values. A writer should be a beacon of values not only in words but also in deeds. That’s what I’ve been taught.

People might think you avoid them because you are hostile while underhand you write cute fairytales for them. You have to come out of your nutshell and be majestically friendly, which shouldn’t be difficult. You write for people only if you love them, otherwise, Calliope wouldn’t contact you.

It runs smoother if I schedule my meetings with the audience, aka neighborhood, and tune in to be an appropriate ray of sunshine for that hour or two. 

I’m trying to accept that constantly chasing nectars of joy people are conflictual but they are a part of my potential audience. After all, muses can also be whimsical. Everyone who’s ever had writer’s block will confirm. Muses get ideas by reading other people’s minds, which are not always lovely. A writer is just a conductor—copper, silver, or gold, time will tell.

People’s thoughts may straighten if read as they are or transformed according to the wordsmith’s delicacy. The exposure and correction of erroneous thoughts inevitably lead to an improvement in their quality and thus to an amelioration of the quality of life in general. Basically, whatever nonsense you publish, there will be someone who, in one way or another, will learn from you.

After all that has been said, I’ll sing a little ode to conflict.

If you are known as a generally harmonious person, then conflict will be a certain highlight of your modest but firm character, which will only make you appear more respectable. Conflict is the show off of human ignorance when misguided people mislead other incognizant people into the abyss, because never in human history have disorderly people conquered the mountain. I’d have no rush to jump recklessly into this tub of muddy water to prove my body has weight. 

Calmly addressing a conflict situation helps to find a universal solution to a problem, which means getting rid of it forever.

Although it takes me out of my mental conversation, I have to learn about the issue at hand to resolve the interference: the sooner I start repairing, the sooner I can return to my inner search. 

The world is on your shoulders, humanitarians.