Hard times and Serenity — as good as it gets (mini-text)

* you will face adversity (aka “hard times”). Adversity level (“hardness”) is a subjective and contextual measure: useless to discuss (sometimes death of a loved one is not that hard for some people, whereas unemployment can lead to suicide).
* The distribution of hard times in the population is in great part random, although some behaviors (such as heavy drug addiction, gambling, etc.) may alter random distribution.
* You will count on people that for one reason or another you grew dependent on (and you will review those reasons, and you will regret most)
* The chances that these people will make things worse is equal to the chances of them making things better.
* Family relations are unexceptionally ambivalent. You will most likely learn it the hard way. When you are absolutely beaten down by destiny, family members will abuse you. They will also support you. That makes things confusing.
* You need them, though. You will eat the humble pie. You will never be able to love them again. That’s how love dies: by abuse during vulnerability
* Friends that could solve your situation in 15 seconds will refuse to do so. You will learn that friendship is an almost useless concept because it is related to such a huge and complex matrix of variables that the equation to define a “friendship index” beats the best mathematicians
* you will learn that trust is probably the most important thing in human relations, and it is a rare commodity
* out of hell, if you survive (and there is a big “if” there), important pieces of wisdom will be forged and you will keep them forever
* you will learn who are your friends. Maybe of all things, that’s the only fact that will be unproblematic. All the rest will be fogged by imprecision, doubt, imprecise interpretation models, lack of information and, in the end, by exhaustion, everything will be object to indifference
* if you survive (again, that “if”), you will be such a changed person that you could adopt a new name.
* I will adopt a new hair color, my smile will be mostly bureaucratic (and for those who are my friends, my smile won’t matter) and my writing will improve (it is improving, on par with pain and disappointment). Maybe (we’ll see, when I go back to training and competing), my strength will improve, too. As my ability to love people decreases (I love less people, but maybe I love those more), my ability to love ideas, the iron and a mission increases. And I am ok with that.

That is called Serenity