"ជីវិតគឺជាសៀវភៅដែលសរសេរនៅក្នុងឈាមរបស់ខ្ញុំ"

You need to leave everything — and be somewhere in someone else’s cycle of life. We urgently need to start some other life. Which one is unclear, but certainly not the one that you live now, even if an hour or two ago you were quite satisfied with yourself (at least) with the way you live now.

But really, there are many places or events where other people feel good and joyful even without me — and this does not mean that they feel bad with me. There are many places and events where others feel good, because I am not there. There are places where they don’t even remember me, although they know. There are peaks that I cannot reach because I chose to climb others — and someone ended up where I, by my own choice, will never find myself or will rise, but much later. And then this temptation arises — to turn away from your life, to experience what is happening to you now as not valuable, but what is happening without you — as the only important thing, and yearn for it, and stop seeing what surrounds you.

What helps to meet this temptation and return to yourself, and not endlessly yearn for where I am not and, perhaps, will not be? What allows you to be equal to yourself, not to jump out of your own skin and not try to pull on someone else’s? A few years ago, I found the magic words for myself, which I have already shared here — but it will never be superfluous to repeat them. These are the words of John Tolkien, which he wrote to his publisher, tired of constant discussions about whether it is even possible to publish such a “wrong” novel as The Lord of the Rings, and that maybe it should be edited, cut somewhere in half … or even rewrite. “This book is written in my blood, thick or thin, whatever it is. I can’t do more.»

This life is written with my blood, thick or liquid — whatever it is. I cannot do more, and I have no other blood. And therefore, all attempts to commit bloodletting to oneself with a frenzied demand “Pour me another!” are useless! and «cut these fingers for not having you»…

You can write with the blood of your heart — and then my «book» can take its place among the favorite works of some good person. And it can stand next to, on the same shelf, with the book of the one whom I envied so much and in whose shoes I so wanted to be. Surprisingly, they can be equally valuable, although the authors are very different. It took me several years to realize this fact.