I had a wonderful hike this weekend with P&K. Their joyful talk about remembering each other’s hiking shoes through the years of marriage prompted me to remember about my ex’s, Kate the Greenhouse, father, and his boots.

He was dying of a brain tumor and I didn’t know how to deal with it, what I should do and how to conduct myself. I was not human enough to neither relate nor participate to the degree the situation was inviting. I had my troubles of the youth and dying man in his fifties, whom I barely knew, was not the biggest one of them. I want to say “I could barely fathom what he was going through”, but that would not be true to my past self: to say that I would need to have tried, but I don’t remember making serious attempts. What I remember is distancing myself from this trouble, for whatever reason I found to be viable.

He was fading fast, but not momentarily. It took a few months between losing the ability for coherent speech to not being able to move at all, not a little walk, not turning oneself on the bed.

His eyes though, were telling and alive, sparkling throughout all these months. He smiled, too. He had one of these uneven smiles that you see in cowboy movies where one side of the mouth smiles to the fullest, while the other allows itself only a glimpse of it. This smile let everybody know that this is a controlled joy to last just a few moments, to be treasured as a rarity. While dying, he was smiling plenty, with his eyes watering, as it was one of little ways of communication he was left with.

When he was done suffering and funerals were through, to which I haven’t participated, even though being in a relationship with his daughter for some years now, his wife, and Kate insisted that I take his hiking shoes. They were really good and sturdy, probably expensive too, never worn: he hadn’t found an occasion before the sickness took him captive. Each shoe weighted like a brick, one of those that makes the owner feel like an all-terrain mammal, never to be worn without significance, profoundly transformative to the personality.

I had some hikes with them, and the feeling of wearing dead man’s shoes never left me. It was almost superstitious, like his spirit is after me while I have them on my feet, and I must not wrong him in any way, or shoes will betray me. I don’t have these shoes now and my memory fails to report what happened to them. I probably never took them with me in between moving countries: having to reduce my life to 23kg on multiple occasions shaved off a lot of artifacts.

Those were the best hiking footwear I’ve ever had. And now, having to buy a new pair, wearing it, I know I will compare it to those, the best ones. I will be returning to the moment of my life where I didn’t know how to be human enough to fit and maybe help, looking back, measuring the trek behind, wearing the dead man’s shoes I no longer possess.

I was born in Siberia, Russia and lived there up until the blessed age of 25 when my prefrontal cortex grew into full bloom. My mother’s half of the family is of German ancestry, and though I have never been German citizen or visited it before adulthood, the language had a faint presence in my countryside childhood through the elders messing with us, youngsters.

Since late 2017 I live in the Netherlands and am a citizen of the lands below. For those who struggle to keep up with the plot twists of the 21st century timeline, 2017 was both some years before pandemic and Putin’s invasion to Ukraine. I didn’t need to wait for these cues to immigrate, though I don’t blame those who did. I left simply because I couldn’t withstand impregnable glory of my motherland anymore.

I am 35 now. I share common struggle of integrating in Dutch society with fellow expatriated populace, after 8 years I still don’t feel like I am part of local community aside from few close international friends I managed to gather around myself and who were patient enough to tolerate me through years.

I am ignorant about politics probably more than my old tsar would have ordered his institutions to make me and I am scared.

Lately, my day starts with RSS full of articles about USA-separatism of all sorts. Most notably, I had chills reading about Mark Carney, PM of Canada, delivering a speech on “divorcing USA.”^1, mentioning “American hegemony” and inevitably affecting charts of Merriam-Webster dictionary top lookups:

Who was the poor soul titubating that day - beats me, but it makes me happy to see how grand masses familiarize themselves with simple joy.

Linguistic trends aside, I truly am excited to see how the Hegemons are criticized on their own levels and how it echoes into waves of EU-sovereignty support in all possible directions. But I also, struggle to imagine how it is going to unfold, and therefore I am (ir)rationally scared. And so surely are you. After all, we be of one blood, ye and I and everything unknown frightens ye and spooks I, deeply.

“Will there be more wars or current ones become bigger? Will I have enough money to sustain my family? Will my life change a lot in coming years in the ways that are out of my control? Will society that doesn’t feel like I belong to treat me poorly considering my origin?”

If you are thinking all of these and them some - I am here to tell you, you are not alone. You at least have me in the trenches of the great fret, confused and waiting, looking.

And if imagining potential withdrawal from great Hegemon addiction doesn’t affect you even a tiny bit, whether you live in the land, which surely by now must be great again, or outside of it - I applaud to you, and accept your full judgment.

In the times of heft and uncertainty I value the most those people who are calm, clear in their mind and kindhearted in their actions. Who don’t spread panic. Who give me reassurance in stability of their existence and by extension - increase stability of my existence. Who inspire me. They see chaos of the world through the inner gyroscope built on top of exact knowledge of who they want to be at most of the conscious moments of their life.

On my good days - I try to be this person for others and I do my best to absorb what others have to spill, on the bad days - I seek such person.

Be such person. If you can’t - find one, tune to their frequency, echo them.

When war in Ukraine broke out - for some days I was one of many volunteers meeting first waves of refugees on the Amsterdam Central Station arriving in hundreds a day. I tried to greet every single one with smile and maybe a joke, confidence, and sense of belonging. I don’t imagine it could possibly help much to the people I met, but it maybe helped just a tiny bit. It had more chances to help than to make it worse. I shouldn’t and I don’t take pride in it: many others did so much more than I, given the same opportunity, in the same moment, but I wasn’t on neither the passive side nor on the negatively contributing one. I did some little, but good, of that I am sure.

If there’s no energy for active action, or directions are unknown - refusing to participate in the action that seems wrong or damaging is good already. Don’t spread panic, don’t engage in rage, don’t share the link full of hatred, don’t doom-scroll - there might a moment in future not so distant when your clarity and stability will be the most valuable resource for society around you, for the common good. I want you to start hoarding this resource today, from whatever little bits and pieces are to your avail.

Choose to be the person you need the most.

And it will make difference.

You will make difference.