Heroes Not Zombies

Montaigne lived through a particularly violent period of history. Both Catholics and Protestants committed horrendous acts of barbarity and cruelty against each other. It was easy to despair, to think the human race was a horrible one and that the end of times was nigh. Many people thought exactly that. But not Montaigne.

He believed the important thing to do was to realise that even though dreadful things were happening they weren’t happening everywhere or to everyone. In the face of the stories of despicable cruelty it was important to guard one’s own humanity, to live as fully human a life as possible.

He did this by focusing on the ordinary every day.

This is a version of focusing on the present moment, the real here and now, instead of becoming anxious, stressed and depressed by the stories of elsewhere and imagining all kinds of dreadful potential futures.

When I read about this I immediately thought about the present war in Ukraine. There’s a Ukrainian woman, called Yaroslava Antipina who lives in Kyiv and shares a photo from her apartment window every day. The photos are ordinary. They show the other tower blocks around her which she can see from her eighth floor apartment. She writes about her daily coffees and describes trips to shops, to work, to the gym and going out for driving lessons.

Ordinary every day here and now life. A human being guarding her humanity during war. She also shares another activity – putting together food parcels and delivering them to other Ukrainians in need. A generous, caring, socially conscious human being.

Yaroslava Antipina, who you can find on Twitter as “strategywoman ”, tweets daily about life in Kyiv using the hashtag “warcoffee”. Here’s a great example of her approach……

11:15 pm in #Kyiv

In war book-diary made note that now normal life falls on our shoulders. We wear it like a super cozy coat. It protects us from wind & cold.
But we know that every moment this normal life ‘coat’ might be taken away.
We learned to appreciate what we have now.

Isn’t that beautiful and remarkable? It’s exactly what Montaigne did and advised during civil war in the sixteenth century!