The straw that broke the camel’s back

The Day I Stopped Hoping and Started Living

2025 was special. Not because it was particularly hard, I’ve had hardship before. I’ve overcome hardship before. No.

It’s because this time round I didn’t act in a way that I always had.

As I write this, there is a certain level of calm that I have never felt before. And boy, the last decade, not just the last year, was an anxious one.

I studied yoga philosophy for many years, but it took a broken patella and a let down from a business partner to finally crash me. To throw me to the bottom of the deepest canyon of depression and to keep me there until I finally got it: nobody’s coming.

You see, for many years, and up until this Christmas, I was waiting for people to be there for me. To support me. To be in my corner. To be happy for me. And back in the day, when I didn’t receive it, I would feel angry. But anger, unless channelled well is rather stupid.

It’s like drinking poison and hoping that the other person is going to get hurt.

I spent years being mad at my father for being cold. So terribly demanding but never applauding. I’ve spent years trying to impress him. Like a clown. A circus man. So many tricks, none of them useful but how entertaining.

The straw that broke the camel’s back arrived this December. After 10 months of rehab and, as my coach puts it: ‘an extraordinary work ethic’, I managed to get back to weightlifting, bah- surpass my form pre-accident. Only to be told by my father that Olympic Weightlifting is not the most important thing in the world. Ha. We have a saying in Polish: ‘talk to an arse and it will shit on you’. There. Again and again, I’ve been shat on. 

But this time, I didn’t get angry. I felt a tremendous amount of sadness. Mostly for that little girl, now age 47, still holding on to hope.

Hope will make you blind. Hope will make you do stupid things.

As Pema Chödrön writes in When Things Fall Apart: ‘We hold on to hope and hope robs us of the present moment.’ As long as hope exists, we will ceaselessly look for some form of security in the form of other’s people acknowledgment.

Hope and fear is a feeling with two sides. As long as there’s one, there’s always the other.

If I have hope that my father is going to notice me, there is fear that he won’t.

So, I think I have finally given up hope. There is no hope. He won’t.

And this is why this year was special. I can now live for myself.

This year of solitude, both because of where we live (in the middle of nowhere) and the circumstances that unfolded, the countless times I reached out to oh-so-many people where I repeatedly asked for a zoom call or phone call or facetime, only to be brushed under the carpet with the socially acceptable and honourable even: ‘I’m busy’… I don’t have any more hope.

You know it sounds absurd to say that I’ll finally live for myself. Aren’t we all always living for ourselves?

On paper, for sure.

Subconsciously? Not really.

The need for approval. The need to be liked and accepted. As if our self-worth wasn’t worth a thing without the stamp of approval from others.

This is acutely clear when you look at social media.

Would you still be doing all the things that you do if you couldn’t brag about it on Instagram?

Would you really want to be so busy if you couldn’t give yourself a pat on the shoulder by bragging about your business to your peers and clients alike? Really?

Because since my (new) self-worth doesn’t depend on it, as I lost all hope that there is anybody there that gives a shit about my business, I don’t want to be busy.

I’m tired of being busy for the sake of being busy as if that business was my proof of being useful. Because if that business stems from self- centeredness which stems from a lack of self-worth, then I don’t want it.

The initial sadness that comes from this realisation is that nobody’s coming. Nobody’s there to clap for you. Not really. And if you are still hoping, you are also fearing that they won’t. Anxiety. Loads of it.

So yes, this year was special. I finally raised the curtain and faced the truth. And this freed me to live for myself. For this present moment. Where my usefulness comes from being kind, as opposed to being needy (to be seen as kind).

I realised that I no longer need to fill my time with conquests. I no longer feel guilty for being present.

I no longer feel anxious that I’m wasting my time if every minute of my life is not spent on getting noticed by relentless pursuits of triumph in the eyes of those who are not there. For those who don’t care.

Now that my kindness is not conditional, I can give more of it. I can finally do things that I’m passionate about, because I want to. And this passion is pure, not forced, not needing to be applauded. It comes from my heart. And this is where I really feel myself useful. Of service.

And loved.