You’re taken aback, someone very young asks if you plugged in your laptop, if you know how to use Instagram, like you’re missing a neuron;


Someone half your age, asks you what work and life experience you have, how you prove you know what it means to work with people;


Someone who thinks they know better than you what colours of sofa and furniture are best to have in your home;


Someone seriously offends you, just like that, in one breath, then continues the conversation, as if nothing had been said; when you’re stuck, hesitating whether to retort, you’re asked: ‘are you still there, is something wrong?’, with a candour that leaves you wide-eyed, wandering into the void;


It seems easier, at least once a year, to join the crowd gathered in the valley of weeping, to allow yourself to tire a little;


Your shoulder joints ache without having made a wrong move, and that shows you’re not 30 anymore;


Your tests aren’t going well, even though you didn’t do anything wrong, you were careful with your food (ok, not with sweets, but otherwise you followed some rules);


You seem to have a much harder time with winter, with the cold, although you used to love feeling snowflakes on your tongue, on your cheeks, walking through the snow on the streets;


You realize you’re alone, especially when it’s hard;


But…
You meet a brilliant mind that has enough information to take you through philosophy, literature, marketing, sociology, psychology, politics, branding, history, and your confidence in this world returns, you feel the luckiest human being alive;


You meet one person online who always has something good to say, who seems like they weren’t there when the negativity was spread around the world, and again you feel lucky;


You come across a book that’s worth waking up earlier for, worth sleeping less for, worth going on about because, lo-and-behold, you can live more lives through the great writings of the world;


So, all of a sudden, some people will belittle us, take us for suckers, give us advice on how to do with our own firm, how to change our hair, our eyelashes, our makeup, who to date, and so much more. Feedback is good, but a little humility wouldn’t hurt. Otherwise, I’d say that sometimes it’s good to repeat some of the poet’s lines: ‘De te-ndeamnă, de te cheamă, tu rămâi la toate rece’.