”When I was little, in the neighbourhood where I lived, near a river, I often found snails in the grass. I would carefully pick them up, put them on a wide leaf and sing to them:

Melc, melc, codobelc,
Scoate coarne bourești,
Și te du la baltă,
Și bea apă caldă,
Și te du la Dunăre,
Și bea apă tulbure,
Și te suie pe buștean,
Și mănâncă leuștean!

(Snail, snail, snail,
Take out the bull horns.
And take you to the pond
And drink warm water
And take you to the Danube
And drink muddy water
And climb up the log,
And eat the logwood!)

The snails were pulling out their tentacles, to our immense joy: we managed to convince the snails with our voice, we had the impression that the snail understood us. But at the slightest breeze, they would retract their tentacles, so sensitive and fragile were they. Sometimes, because we were small and had the unconsciousness of a child who was just trying to see what was going on, we would touch the snail with a caress to see how it would retreat. And it seemed to shut itself off, to feel threatened, to retreat, not to come out for a while.

I often had the feeling that people are like these snails: enormously sensitive, exacerbated in the last two years.
Let’s think about how many times we have felt hurt, attacked, unseen, unappreciated, or overreacted to a statement, a criticism that seemed unfair? Sure, when we detached, we saw differently, we thought coldly. But we have had or seen people who remind us again of when we were children and we would get angry, literally take our toys and leave. Now we metaphorically take them and leave or threaten that we ‘won’t play anymore’. The adult regresses, withdraws, and makes the way in the scene for the wounded child.
Then we also feel that we work the hardest, that we are not appreciated, in some cases. At other times, doubts overwhelm us, the impostor syndrome holds us back and keeps us awake wondering: ‘What if I’m not good enough?’
All these anxieties have been brought to light in thick tufts in the context of all the changes the whole world has gone through in the last 10-15 years. All the technological developments, the repositioning towards life and work brought about by the new generations, the pressure to change ourselves, to adapt to the context, the ever-present need for people after a certain age to become their own boss, the preoccupation with leaving something behind, all this in this liminal state in which the pandemic has kept us for almost two years, with no clear horizon of expectation of the end, has made people’s emotional and mental health suffer.
Of course, there are many initiatives at the societal level.
For example, the G7 countries have adopted an initiative called Build Back Better World. What does this mean? A better world could take into account the benchmarks of contemporary society, driven by technological advancement, increasing complexity, but also by the level at which many people’s morale is now and their concern for their fellow human beings.
But until all this changes, what do we do, each of us, how do we keep ourselves in balance, how do we learn to swim and stay afloat?
I won’t talk about various techniques to keep us in balance, after all, we know a lot, in the words of the poet, ‘all is old and all is new’. The question is what we do with what we know. It’s about prioritising, according to that principle summarised by Tony Robbins, in the phrase ‘where attention goes, energy flows’. It’s about managing our energy, we all have the same amount of time, 24 hours.
But before prioritising, it is essential to work with our own mindset. I’ll take an example. I said above that we are hyper-sensitive, like snails. We are easily attacked, we feel offended by any statement that has a firmer tone, a stronger word, a look.
But how would it be to think that the other person is also like the snail, with their sensitivities, that they also lives in the same world, that they are also affected, that it is not their aim in life to attack us? How about letting certain comments, tones, looks or non-privacy pass us by more easily and moving forward, confidently? I’m not saying let’s forget. It’s not about forgetting. Feeling unfair can make us quite angry, damage our relationships with others and make ourselves sick. It’s vital that we don’t get attached to this feeling, that we don’t let it cling to us, so that we can move freely, freely, detached, through the world.
To forgive others’ lapses is to free ourselves of burdens we don’t need. It does not mean denying that we have been hurt, that something has wronged us. It means moving on after we have accepted it, not getting stuck. It’s like when we hit a pole walking down the street (I don’t know if it happened to you, it happened to me because I was walking and not looking, I was paying attention to something else). We don’t stay mad at the pole, we don’t resent it for hurting us, we know it didn’t do it on purpose. But when another person hurts us, we think they did it on purpose, that they set out to be a jerk, a bastard, a bad human, we attribute free will to them.

But what if we think that other people are also like snails with their tentacles removed, they also go out into the world with their vulnerabilities, their anxieties, their worries, their concerns, that some are in different phases of existence than us, that some are single, others are in a couple but feel worse than those without a partner, that others fear for their job, for their parents, and so on. Maybe the other doesn’t choose to misbehave. Maybe we’ve hit another pole, with all its filters, fears, childhood, upbringing, patterns mixed in.
Socrates said that no one hurts another on purpose, of their own free will (I exclude pathological cases, that’s a field for specialists). So, the other had the choice between being as they were when they hurt us, or otherwise, and they didn’t? Is this the only possible interpretation? Weren’t they also a human beings with their own sufferings, their own wounds? Let us imagine ourselves as an army of snails with their tentacles out, wandering about, and being more forgiving.”

via: Forbes