Don't spend your life waiting for justice by first giving away your debt and then lamenting the non-recovery.....

There are three attitudes that lead you to neurosis. I didn't come up with that. It's Albert Allison. I'll just put it in my own words.

One. I must. I must be brave and smart and skillful. I must love my mom, always be right, and please the grown-ups. Add a couple more paragraphs about good girls, bad boys, heroes, and princesses on a pea.

Second. They have to. Because I do! They don't! They wear short skirts when they should be dressing modestly. They spend money in restaurants, and they should be helping stray dogs. They go to the ends of the earth, and they should remember that nobody needs us there.

Three. They owe me. "Hey, Fairy. I have lived for forty years as a good girl, sewed dresses, picked peas, planted roses, slept in ashes, where is my prince or at least my horse?".

Prince is gone. The prince has already squandered his father's capital with bad girls, got into debt, was spotted by paparazzi with an unknown actor for taking illegal substances, survived the scandal and harassment, abdicated the throne, went to rehab, returned, repented and leads personal growth training. And he's celibate. Maybe. But most likely married to the same lost sheep.

No matter how good you were not, no matter how right you did not act, were malleable, fulfill all requests, do not ask and wait patiently - there will be no reward. Prince will not come to you in your old age and will not say: "Thank you for solving for Lyuska tests and translate kittens across the road".

Do you know how many times I've heard: "But I wrote him a report until morning, then listened to his complaints about life, then gave him money, then in a blizzard I was taking him a cake and wolves were chasing me, and he did not meet me at the airport and did not give me a piece of bread. After all, a man should realize that he also owes". No, he doesn't. Because you didn't do it for him, you did it for yourself. If you had done it for him, he would have written the report himself, and he would have earned the money himself, and paid for the cab you used to bring him the pie. And so you did it all for yourself, to show how smart and good you are, dying yourself, and helping out your comrade, and don't care that you haven't done, haven't cooked, and don't have warm boots - the wolves ate them.

My dad worked on construction sites all his life. I love my dad and watching Soviet movies with him. The plot: they build something important in the forest, all day long the team is at work in the rain, and in the evening the workers come and fall into a wet bed without strength, because it rained all day, the roof leaks in a residential barrack, people have colds, but the construction is more important, not to bourgeois life. Because people should think first about the common cause, and then about personal interests.

So, my dad thinks they are very bad builders, and their foreman is an asshole, because if they all fall ill with pneumonia and die in the woods without medical help, the construction site will stop for a couple of months while a new crew is brought to the site. The dead, of course, will be called heroes. Posthumously. A normal foreman first gives an order to fix the roof, provides hot meals and a bath, and then demands a plan and a feat.

Life is like that. Somewhere you're right, and somewhere you're a lion. Some days you're a hero, some days you're a bushwhacker. Sometimes you're a victorious beauty, and sometimes you ignore your leaky mascara and open another bottle of wine without a corkscrew. But you have to fix your roof first before you can build a future for everyone.

At the root of humility is the word "peace." When you come to terms with the fact that you're not the best person on this earth. Not the best girl. Not the best daughter. You don't have a place on the honor board. And you didn't get a medal. And it's okay to be mad at your mom. And you don't have to be the perfect wife. And you don't have to give your neighbor your last shirt. It's not about submission. It's about finding peace of mind. Not to spend your life waiting for justice, first giving away your debt, and then bemoaning the lack of repayment. It's about giving as much as you can give without hurting yourself. Because you can. And you want to. Not because you'll be owed for it.