From the author: Material taken from Horizontal Races In one fairy tale, a young man, as usual, saves a wizard who offers to fulfill any of his wishes. And more than anything else, the young man wants to see the world. Well, he receives, accordingly, magic shoes that can transport him to anywhere in the world. First, with their help, he gets to the nearest town to spend the night. The owner of the hotel has a beautiful daughter, with whom the young man falls in love, then marries her and remains to live in this town. He always dreams of putting on his shoes and making his dream come true, but children are born, they need to be raised and educated. Then the father-in-law dies, bequeathing the “hotel business” to his son-in-law. Finally, all matters are settled, children and grandchildren are provided for. And the very old man that that young man has become finally decides to fulfill his dream. His wife, looking into his room, finds him dead in a chair. And there are magic shoes nearby... Isn’t that how we live today, postponing “for later” everything we once dreamed of? That young man at least exchanged his dream for love, family, children. And we often exchange it for the all-consuming pursuit of making money and flatter ourselves with the hope that they will help us realize it someday. People live in an illusory future, completely losing their present and not finding time to remember the past. Then the question arises: do we live at all? What transformations and metamorphoses happen to our soul? This is the difficult topic of today’s conversation with our regular consultant, psychologist, psychoanalyst Ekaterina Antonova. Slaves of banknotes - Ekaterina Andreevna, what happened to us? We once said that Americans have dollars instead of eyes, and now we ourselves are becoming like them?—There are vertical and horizontal values. Vertical - spiritual, horizontal - material. Ideally, they should be harmoniously balanced. But ideals are rare, but substitution of values ​​is common. What happened? The vertical tilted and almost coincided with the horizontal. For many, making money has become an end in itself. By the way, I am not a supporter of the reverse distortion, when only spiritual values ​​remain. I just knew a woman who gave her teenage son an onion for dinner and said: “Eat what the Lord sent.” Moreover, she lived in a village and had her own vegetable garden. But she preferred to spend all her days in church. Even the priest reprimanded her. “First raise your son, and then come to church.” If you are responsible for someone, you do not have the right to cross out the “horizontal” from your life, regardless of all your spiritual aspirations.— But today, more and more often, it is the “vertical” that is crossed out, or rather, they put it off “for later”...— Precisely from -for substitution of values! Everything seems: first, I will solve material problems, earn enough money, and only then allow myself spiritual needs. But that’s the trouble: there is never enough money. In fact, life is put off “for later.” This is very typical for businessmen. At some point, they stop seeing people in front of them, and see only opportunities for making a profit. And then business begins to guide the person, dictating what and when to do, how to behave, what decisions to make. What kind of freedom are we talking about?! A businessman becomes a weak-willed slave of his own business. Such people often contact me. Do you know what complaint? "I do not feel anything". That is, a person lives like a robot, like an automaton. But when you start helping him and his emotions gradually return, the majority at that moment declare: “That’s enough, that’s enough, otherwise I’ll lose my business.” Well, everyone makes their own choice. — I knew a Russian girl who married a Swiss man. I was surprised that, given her great love for literature, there were practically no books in their apartment. I was also surprised by the rather meager selection of food in the refrigerator. It turned out that they were in austerity mode. At the same time, the husband earned six thousand francs, whichby their standards, very decent, and from morning to evening he was at work. To my question, why is life in Switzerland better than in the Union, she answered me: “But in the summer we have a wonderful vacation on the Aegean Sea!” Don’t you think it’s too “wasteful” to live for one month of the year? - It all depends on how the other eleven go. After all, in addition to the Aegean Sea, once a year you can enjoy the opportunity to play with your child every day. You can rush to work in the morning, but at the same time notice the blossoming lilacs and inhale its aroma. You can look forward to the kids going to sleep and the opportunity to talk with your husband about what happened during the day, or even just sit next to you and read. This is all life, and you need to be able to enjoy every moment of it. Live here and now. But now something else is happening. Dad takes his child home from kindergarten and thinks about what he has to do at work tomorrow. The wife sits down to dinner with her husband in the evening, and she mentally comes up with what she will tell her boss about her salary tomorrow. In anticipation of tomorrow, today is lost. However, tomorrow never comes. Do you know why? Because it will become “today” for you, you will forget about it and start thinking about the next day again. This is a trap. We are going after the smell of the taiga - But they are driving us into this trap. All the time we are persistently given models of new cars, new cosmetics, new household appliances in advertising. To acquire all this, you need to earn even more money. Which, in fact, is where all the time is spent. — You know, the brilliant psychoanalyst Carl Jung wrote that in the soul of every person there is a place for God. But everyone decides for themselves what to do with this place. You can put a prestigious car on it, a holiday in a five-star hotel once a year, a new fur coat or something else. Your right. One day a boy came to me with a massive cross hanging around his neck. I became interested and asked what faith and God meant to him. He answered completely unexpectedly for me: “You know, it’s something inside me that motivates me to do good deeds and creates certain taboos.” I realized that for him, faith and God are not empty words, and the cross on his neck is not a tribute to fashion. It was very nice. — Another “picture from life.” My friend and her husband go on vacation to Crimea every year, although their salaries are pitiful. Do you know how they get out of the situation? They rent a room in some hostel. Yes, the shower and toilet are on the floor, the room is torn, but is that really the point? Is it really the case that they have kefir for breakfast and dinner because they can’t afford resort cafes? But they see stunningly beautiful nature, swim in the sea, and see all the sights. They return as absolutely happy people. — Because emotional fulfillment is important to them, genuine impressions and colors of life are important. This is what they are going for. But I can give you a lot of examples when people, after a holiday in a luxury hotel, return with a bunch of complaints and a huge stock of negativity: the room was not cleaned properly, the food was tasteless, and the sea turned out to be blue, but they were going to Red. Because all their expectations lie in the exclusively “horizontal” sphere, that is, material. And here there will always be a shortage of everything or everything will not be of the proper quality. These are unhappy people because they are not able to feel and appreciate the beauty of life. To be honest, I feel sorry for them. One can only envy your friend and her husband. - It’s terrible that in these endless pursuits of some mythical material well-being, adults completely forget about children... - I’ll even say more. Now a new fashion has emerged: “investing in children.” According to the principle: we will work hard around the clock, but our child will have English, tennis, a private violin teacher, and ballroom dancing. They say that this is all an investment in the child’s future. As a result, the confused child barely has time to run from section to section; he simply does not know his parents, but tries to meet their expectations and the money spent. The result is neurosis, anxiety, obsessive.