Well, ladies and gentlemen, dear readers! I am sincerely grateful for such warm and heartfelt support. Thank you to my friendly and soulful community on Reddit. It has inspired me even more to continue writing.
While responding to comments on my previous post on Reddit, I had an idea for the topic of my next post. I even came up with a title for it in advance – “The army is a prison until you change your attitude.” Spoiler alert – I haven’t been able to change my attitude yet, so right now the army is like a prison to me 🙂
But I want to say right away that I don’t think the army is a prison a priori. The army becomes a prison for people like me, for people who have not been able to, or have not yet had time to find the right attitude towards the army. I would even say not to find it, but to create it in your mind, in your soul.
As most of you know from my story, the army came to me quite unexpectedly. This is probably where the roots of my prisoner mentality come from. That is, for the most part, I was simply reacting to the situation. I did not do what I wanted and decided within myself, but did what the situation demanded of me. The situation in the form of me receiving a draft notice 🙂
Of course, at a certain point, I personally made my own decision—not to evade, but to join the Armed Forces of Ukraine after all. But this decision was strongly influenced and fueled by the external situation.
What is this prisoner mentality—I have no choice, I am obliged to stay here until the end of the war. I am obliged to do what I am told. Whether I want to or not, I am obliged to do it. I cannot do what I want, I must do what I am told.
For example, in the comments on the previous post, one person wrote, “I worked in a similar job and quit after two years.” Another wrote, “I had the opportunity to quit after three days.” I can’t quit. Ha ha! I just realized that even the word in Ukrainian is very apt—I can’t quit here. That’s the consciousness of a prisoner.
On the other hand, if you read various books about success, books by successful people, they also often use the words “I must,” “I have to,” etc. What’s the difference? They didn’t want to get up at 5:00 a.m., go for a morning run, study English, etc. either. But they understood the value of all this. They came to this conclusion ideologically.
It turns out that my problem is that I have not grown to a certain ideological level. I grabbed onto the high-speed train with my hand. But I didn’t have enough strength to climb into it, walk into the comfortable saloon, and sit down in a comfortable chair. So here I am, dangling on the ground. I can’t let go of the train, and I can’t get into the car 🙂
When in your life have you done something that you considered very important, and you had to go through some difficulties to do it? Not eating, or not sleeping, or even taking a certain risk. Did you feel like a prisoner? I don’t think so. You came home tired and exhausted, but satisfied with yourself, satisfied that you had done a good deed.
As I come to the end of this article, I get the impression that I wrote it more for myself than for others 🙂 No, I think I wrote it for us, for you and for me. Am I right? Will I be able to make it happen? Will I be able to break free from the prisoner’s mindset? I hope so. I hope so, and I will make every effort to make it happen, because hope always lives on 🙂
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