Shh! Listen, friend, I am writing this letter to warn you of impending danger. Don’t turn around, pretend you’re reading funny memes on your phone right now. You can even occasionally laugh so that THEY don’t suspect anything. I want to tell you important news. Please, take it seriously. The point is that you are not an ordinary person. You are the king. You have the power. You rule yourself, your body, your thoughts and actions. And this is a lot. You are the master of your destiny. You make decisions and control your own life. Right? But who said that it is so easy for kings to sit a throne and that you alone want to manage all this wealth? All these years THEY have been preparing a sabotage against you. While you slept peacefully, ate, went to work, THEY quietly hid behind your back. All bad movies you’ve watched. All the vulgarity, lies, betrayal, injustice, envy, stupidity that you saw on TV screen. All the characters of computer games you killed. All hours spent at MDK. All meanness praising songs we listened. All unread books and unlearned lessons. Hundreds of litres of drunk alcohol. Thousands of smoked cigarettes. Millions of spoken obscene words, every empty black thought, every vile deed. All THEY are here. Line by line. They accumulate and wait for the critical number. THEY are preparing a revolution. A revolution of your consciousness.
Now it’s a matter of time when your power over yourself collapses. There are already too many of them. What will happen next is known. Listen, THEIR requests are already slowly heard from your lips , at first timid, but then more demanding and loud: “We want! Gobble and laugh! Consume, get! Give, give, give!” THEY begin to strike: they do not go to work and study, they hang around all day in the gateway or sit at the computer for days. You already hear THEIR intrusive thoughts in your head, THEY scold, complain, resent, accuse, make claims to the country, relatives, the whole world, but not to themselves. Your world is turning grey and dull. THEY are always unhappy and burst out of you in the form of impulsive actions, take to the streets, squares – and now in your eyes the fierce lights of THEIR incendiary mixtures are already lighting up. And you are not alone. Forward to the barricades! Young, embittered, ignorant, everyone owes you all the time: the government, bosses, parents, acquaintances and even passers-by. But you are never enough. Well-fed, fixated on yourself, obsessed with entertainment and getting pleasure – you no longer know how to rejoice. For so long you have cherished your “friends”: stupidity, indifference, consumerism, laziness, herd feeling, animal instincts, pride, greed, bad habits – you yourself brought them to the Maidan. They promised you a sweet life, but now everything is out of control. You were deceived, my friend.
You were just used in someone else’s game. Your mind is enslaved and captured. This is no longer your head, not your life. It’s time to give all your power to the thoughts that rebelled against you and run away. At the very last moment, you stop near an open door, looking at yourself in the mirror and not recognising that bright kind young man in the reflection whom you came to this world – you understand that at such a turning point you could be saved by your real allies – LIGHT IMAGES … Good books and songs, poetry, art, reflections, knowledge, sports, sobriety, self-development, good deeds … But they are not here. You have been convinced that they are ridiculous. You yourself drove them once from your own life. You betrayed them. Now you have been betrayed too. And here you are, wringing pencils in your fists, helplessly standing in the centre of the raging chaos of your inner world, one on one with this wild Maidan of uncontrollable negative thoughts. The deposed king, the master of the once great empire called “LIFE”. Run and see what happens next to your abandoned country!
The revolution is in full swing. Your head, like a besieged fortress, has been blockaded for too long. The will, surrounded by hordes of destructive information, is broken, and the faithful guardian CONSCIENCE, that was the very that guarded the soul from vices, is put to sleep. The rebels stuck the drug needle of mass culture in it. Now you cannot discern evil, the way is open and the brutal crowd, armed with torches, pitchforks and axes, rushed inside, destroying and trampling all the good that was still in you. Rough, primitive, ugly, they took possession of your values, leaving behind only dirt and emptiness. Who will be their first victim? Of course, the brain – the rebels poison it profusely with alcohol and ignorance. Then, with the help of tobacco, they smoke your health. The stomach is stuffed with harmful junk food, and then pills. The next victim is your skin. They pierce it with needles and, mocking your body, paint it with indelible ink. They brands you. All this happens with laughter, jumps, screams and drunken hooting of the endless parties that they now throw in your house day and night. It happens when clowns and TV series actors come to the kingdom. You have reviewed them so much in your life that now they are in power here.
But these are still little things, the main goal is your soul. The saboteurs blind it with pride, make it deaf, callous, arrogant, indifferent to everything. Your spirit will weaken. A little more and the soul is dead, and streams of stinking hatred rise over its corpse. You do not exist any more. In the place of your empire there are ashes and ruins. Life is broken. But this is not the end. After all, your body is still alive. Only devil knows what they will do with it. They can turn you into a pederast, a criminal, a drunkard, a suicide, a corrupt official, a traitor, Dud, a zigging fascist, an idiot, into a small evil dog, an obedient slave… (note: Yury Dud is a Russian sports journalist and YouTuber)
But you will no longer understand this. After the revolution of consciousness, the absurdity happening around you will seem so normal and even dear. Look back at our society, isn’t this happening to people now? And you naively believe that this fate will pass you? Listen, friend, while the Maidan and devastation have not yet happened in your head, turn around and carefully look at what you are wearing behind your back. What are you growing? Prevent the impending sabotage at the very beginning. Half of the conspirators can be thrown into the trash with the TV. The second half of the “unsanctioned rally” will be dispersed by bright images. And soberness will become a reliable shield in the future … But what is it ?! You frown and disdainfully avert your eyes from the screen with the thought: “What nonsense I just read!” Are you laughing? Is it you who are laughing now? It seems that I am late. Goodbye, my friend …
Toha Ha
Translated by Xenia Shmonina