As to why I admire him, I could not give a better answer than New York Times columnist Bret Stephens, who wrote in an op-ed two months after the Russian invasion that “the question almost answers itself.” Quoting from his excellent and penetrating piece that is as relevant and as true today as it was then:

We admire Zelensky because he models what a man should be: impressive without being imposing; confident without being cocksure; intelligent without pretending to be infallible; sincere rather than cynical; courageous not because he is fearless but because he advances with a clear conscience.

Because I hope that future professional historians will do a much better job than I in presenting Zelensky’s achievements and because there is nothing more I can add to Stephens’s op-ed to express my admiration, I have instead chosen to focus today on one aspect of Zelensky’s greatness that I have not yet seen anybody else adequately refer to. On this solemn four-year anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I consider this to be my modest contribution to honoring the heroic Ukrainian people through their leader.

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“Hubris, when it blooms, bears a grain-head of ruinous folly, from which it reaps an all-weeping harvest.” (Aeschylus)

Chaining the Sea

A sudden storm rose over the Hellespont strait and smashed to pieces the immense bridge that had just been thrown across its waters. The cables snapped, the planks splintered, and the long chain of ships broke apart under the force of wind and current. What had taken weeks of meticulous engineering vanished in a single day. For the man who had ordered the crossing, the destruction was not an accident of nature but a personal insult delivered by an inferior entity – the sea. Xerxes I, King of Kings, lord of the Persian Empire, master of fifty nations, responded accordingly. He commanded that the sea itself be punished by whipping it as if it were a rebellious slave who had dared to resist its master. As they lashed the sea, his men shouted: “You hateful water, your master lays this punishment upon you. King Xerxes will cross you whether you wish it or not!” Herodotus tells us that Xerxes also ordered his men to heat branding irons and plunge them into the water and throw a pair of fetters – shackles, iron chains – into the sea. Each punishment was precise and deliberate: The whipping was what you gave a disobedient slave; the branding was how you marked something as your property; the chains were how you declared a defeated people subjugated. In other words, Xerxes was enslaving the sea as if it were a rebellious subject who had defied his will and now needed to be put in irons! These preposterous acts were not merely theatrical. They were the actions of a man who genuinely could not conceive of a limit to his authority – who had confused his imperial power with cosmic power.

It is one of the most astonishing passages in all of Herodotus’s writings, shocking the reader even today, twenty-five centuries later. The great historian shows us everything we need to know about the arrogance of power: its rage at being resisted, its need to humiliate what it cannot control, and its irrational confusion between dominion over men and dominion over the order of the world itself.

In the end, the engineers rebuilt the bridge, and Xerxes crossed the Hellespont to march through Greece with the largest army the ancient world had ever seen – estimates range from two hundred thousand to over a million men, drawn from every corner of the empire, from Egypt to India. His aim was to punish Athens and avenge his father Darius’s defeat at the Battle of Marathon a decade earlier. Xerxes had inherited both the empire and the unfinished business. At the narrow pass of Thermopylae, a few thousand Greeks alongside three hundred Spartans under King Leonidas held his entire army at bay for three days until they died to the last man and became immortal. Marching on, Xerxes entered Athens and found it empty – the population had evacuated on the advice of their general Themistocles. He burned the temples on the Acropolis and the whole city. But he still had to face the Greek fleet at the straits of Salamis, the narrow channel between the island and the Athenian coast. Themistocles had lured the massive Persian fleet there, into waters too confined for its size to have an advantage. The Greek triremes, lighter and more maneuverable, rammed the Persian ships in the cramped strait where they could neither deploy nor retreat. Xerxes, expecting triumph, watched from a golden throne on the hillside above as his ships burned and his men drowned.

The sea, as it turned out, had the last word!

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These lives inhabit two different worlds. So, we live simultaneously in two different dimensions!

In one life we write, or compose, or think, or construct, or produce something. In the other we eat, go to the toilet, run errands, clean the garage, appear at court, sit in the doctor’s waiting room. In the one life we do what we are meant to do — we live “properly,” so to speak. In the other life we are dragged and pulled by the necessary insignificancies of everyday commonality.

The writer has to stop writing for a while in order to give interviews, market his book, negotiate his cut with his publisher. The artist has to stop painting so that she may search for a gallery to represent her, find clients for her work, move to a new studio with lower rent. The singer has to stop cultivating his voice so that he can deal with lawyers, promote his new song, respond to his critics. When the author writes, the artist paints, and the singer sings, they inhabit one world: we may call it the main highway of life. When they are engaged in all the other incidental sidetracks of being alive, they inhabit the other world.

Yet we seem to be able to move effortlessly from the one life to the other. Most times, we are not even aware of this switching between the two worlds. We are just passive witnesses to its occurrence. One minute the writer thinks or writes, the next minute the phone rings, or the doctor appointment is approaching, and all work must come to a halt in what seems like a seamless transition from one world to the other. This effortless movement hides from our constant view the reality that we truly live two lives.

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But to raise children or rule a country, one need have nothing!

Seen from the vantage point of a future observer living in the twenty-fifth century, our contemporary twenty-first century society will be considered primitive, not because we still have wars and kill one another for a piece of land or as a show of power, not because we destroy our environment, not because we are on the treadmill of the incessant insatiable pursuit of more material goods, but mainly because we allow people to raise children, and rulers to govern us, without their having a license to do so.

Proof of competence, ability, and expert knowledge are required for most jobs. To practice medicine, law, architecture, even to work as a plumber or a woodworker, people train for years and need to prove their competence or earn diplomas. But to become a parent or to rule a nation, qualifications are not necessary. Of course, this has been happening since the beginning of history. Society has tacitly accepted that the biological ability to procreate is sufficient enough reason to allow people to become parents and that the ability to rise to the top of the political hierarchy is sufficient proof of competence to allow one to govern cities and people, nations and countries. So here we are, 300,000 years since the appearance of Homo sapiens, and 5,000 years since the beginning of recorded history, having millions of parents unfit to do the job of raising kids and thousands of rulers who are unfit to lead us.

Yet these two jobs are the most important professions in human society. Raising a child is synonymous with creating a human being, since Man is not born but is made through upbringing (see: “The Incompleteness of Man” in my book The Eternal Ragpicker), while governing is the highest, most important job upon which human civilization is built and through which it evolves.

But what are the reasons for this state of affairs in the world?

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The Unknown pulls us towards new life experiences, new knowledge, new human relationships — a renewed and revitalized life.

The Unknown always calls us, and we can respond either by ignoring or acknowledging it. It may be a simple call, such as following a strange animal sound at night, trying that durian or stinky tofu, or replacing a daily practice with something novel. It may be a larger call that requires us to change our life: depart from our country, change our job, embark on a bold adventure. Or it may be the highest call of which we can conceive: the search for meaning and purpose in our life, or the search for God. Whether big or small, the Unknown beckons us to move forward, explore new behavior, touch Life at new points, connect with the ground of our Being. By moving within the field of the known and familiar, we stop learning and developing; by moving towards the Unknown, we expand and evolve.

Yet many fear the Unknown. There are many reasons for this fear: evolutionary ones rooted in the ingrained archetypal fear of predators — either animal or human — lurking in the dark; psychological ones rooted in our love of well-established routines; social ones related to our sense of belonging and our need to conform to group behavior; existential ones having to do with the fear of encountering the light after getting used to living in our Platonic cave. Still, in spite of this fear, the lure of the Unknown is unmistakable in our life. We may push it aside for a while, we may pretend it is not there or deny its existence, but its call, in any of its many forms, keeps returning. The restlessness at the core of our being cannot allow us respite for too long.

Still, this fear of the Unknown gives rise to a ubiquitous defense mechanism that causes many to remain idle or even completely immobilized in the Known: many say they are willing to explore new possibilities in life, or to move into new fields of creativity and activity. Yet, because of fear, they try to find these new ways of living while remaining enmeshed in what they are already doing. Standing with one foot on the Known, they grope with the other foot in the darkness of the Unknown so that they might find a point from which to make their next step. In other words, they supposedly want to be moving towards the Unknown while still being busy reaping the fruits of the Known. But this is not how Life works.

The movement towards the Unknown requires that the Known be left completely behind.

Just as the adolescent boy must leave his mother’s bosom to become a man, or, to use Kahlil Gibran’s great simile, just as “alone and without his nest shall the eagle fly across the sun,” the power within the Unknown is only released after we fully and fearlessly surrender to its mystery. The nest is warm, comfortable, and safe, but one cannot become an eagle without making the huge leap into the air to test one’s wings in the vastness of the unknown, frightful sky. The Unknown does not reveal its gifts unless we relinquish all contact, all attachments, all footing on the Known.

How could it be otherwise? The Unknown obtains its nature through its contrast to the Known. If we could first define, or explore, or understand the Unknown while standing on the Known — in order to get the Known’s “approval” — the Unknown would cease to be unknown. Actually, there is no way to know the Unknown until we meet it on its own terms! It is through and by those terms that the Unknown releases its inherent power. Just as the sky only offers the abundant gifts of flight and ethereal freedom to the young eagle after the bird completely leaves behind the nest he was raised in, every Unknown that stands before us in our life demands that we completely relinquish our footing on the Known. Once we do that, every Unknown reveals itself in all its might and grandeur. The only way to learn to fly is to spread and flap your wings in the air; the only way to learn to explore new places is to leave your home and start exploring; the only way to begin a new life is to begin it.

These statements are not tautological. Moving into any Unknown is an act. And this act is different from the endless “thinking about,” “planning,” “preparing for.” Such apparent actions are the equivalent of a hapless eagle merely daydreaming about his first flight. Such daydreaming is the main reason why many people fail to move into the Unknown: they think they may plan it, prepare for it, get to know it first while remaining where they are. They even begin to invent “the conditions” the Unknown supposedly requires of them so that it may come to meet them. But all this tossing about, all this supposed preparation, is none other than a self-deceiving game they play with themselves in order to cover the inherent fear of the imminent leap.

However, there is nothing to fear; the Unknown must be embraced. Everything that belongs to the Known of today was once Unknown. So the Unknown is just the name we give to the experiences and knowledge we are yet to gain. Meditating on how we once feared today’s Known because it was Unknown and how irrational these past fears subsequently proved to be, we realize that our present fears will soon be proven equally unfounded.

The Unknown is the great silent force that has been moving our lives since birth. It is its lure and power that helped us grow and become adults, that gave us all the knowledge we have, that created the wonder and magic of the great flight of the eagle that is our life.

In the Trump era, everything I write is an understatement.

Political commentary presumes a shared scale on which we make judgements. It assumes exaggeration is possible and that outrage can be expressed in simple words that can be understood. And that this scale has an upper boundary of shock. But we have crossed this boundary. The grotesque and the unprecedented has become part of our daily routine. We are in new territory, or rather in another solar system. It feels as if we have entered a science fiction movie that introduces new elements every few minutes that we must struggle to make sense of. And as soon as we think we get it, a new parallel plot appears in some other corner of the galaxy, and then another one, each with its own last-minute twists.

In the Trump era, the common reality we all once shared has vanished.

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Hungry? Order a pizza or a hamburger.

Bored? Go on Netflix.

Want to escape? Read a bestselling novel.

Having an existential crisis? Try this podcast or this self-help book.

In today’s world, there’s a solution for everything. Near at hand. Effortless. Immediate.

We live in the Era of Instant Gratification.

We live in an age of pills that “cure” everything: depression, fatigue, insomnia, overweight, sexual impotence … We call “depression” an ailment like it’s a flu, and take a pill to get rid of it, without it crossing our minds that its causes lie in our whole life and the cure comes with understanding and with lifestyle changes. We feel an existential void or a vague feeling of “boredom,” and instead of examining our life at a deeper level and meditating on the why of it all, we switch on the TV and binge a series for eight hours, disconnecting with the real world and entering an imaginary one. Alternatively, we start scrolling short videos on TikTok or YouTube, jumping aimlessly from one theme to another, succumbing to the digital algorithms that have figured out how to maximize our “engagement” so that they can serve us more ads.

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Never before has attention – that slender beam of consciousness through which we think and act – been so dispersed, so fragmented, so divided.

I cannot truly communicate with anybody anymore!

When I talk to people, very few look me in the eyes; their gaze continually diverting to the space around them or their mobile screen. When I try to discuss a subject in some depth, they say “it’s not time for serious conversation now” – it never actually is, for they cannot force their mind to focus. When I ask for their opinion about a subject, most people reply laconically, as if wanting to change the subject; they have not yet formed an opinion because they have had “no time to think about it.” When I ask if they have read that book or this article, they always say they haven’t yet; everything will happen sometime in the future, for they live in endless procrastination.

And when I complain, “Why are you fidgety, why can’t you focus for a few minutes?” the most frequent reply is “I’m busy now, I can’t concentrate, I have a million things on my plate.” I have already addressed this “Busyness” in another essay: Everyone today seems preoccupied, rushing from one obligation to another, caught in an unending choreography of tasks. To be busy is no longer a burden but a boast, a public declaration that one’s life has significance….

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My host family lived in a hut, and I soon befriended the older son, who spoke a bit of Spanish. Nothing special was happening in the village, just men fishing or doing some work in the forest, women cutting vegetables and cooking, and lots of children and chickens running noisily about. Their clothing was half Western, half traditional – a grass skirt here and there for women and a few older men wearing loincloths. A few young men even had mobile phones or some other modern device, such as mechanical tools or fancy knives. It felt like I was witnessing the daily routines of a poor Latin American village; the only difference was that this community was in the forest rather than a city. The “highlight” of the first two days was an annoying, nerve-racking rooster that would crow continually day and night (every fifteen minutes, like a Swiss Cuckoo clock!) – never encountered such a rooster before or since. The second day, when they were about to slaughter a chicken for lunch, I suggested they slaughter him instead, but they laughed and kindly declined. I think they, unlike me, enjoyed the constant loud crowing!

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It was the third day that there was a long line at the neighborhood supermarket’s checkout counters. It was obvious they were short-staffed. I asked for the manager and complained. The next day, everything was fixed.

When they didn’t allow me into a Hindu temple in Kathmandu, Nepal, holding the heavy door shut because the gatekeepers told me only Hindus were allowed in – despite my insistence that I too “was a Hindu” (and a Christian and a Buddhist, for that matter, since I study and learn from all religions) – I went to the police to report it. They came with me to help me get in, but the temple caretakers still declined even with police escort! Returning to the police station, a very annoyed and apologetic chief of police, with whom I had finally become friends, helped me file a complaint to send to the higher authorities to change the temple’s anti-tourist policy.

When, after entering a Zen monastery with a famous garden outside Tokyo, I discovered there was construction and scaffolding all around the temple, I complained that they should not let in visitors because the whole place was a construction site and I asked for my money back. When the monk in charge declined, I found his superior, who consented. After receiving my refund, I gave it back to the monastery as a donation, emphasizing that I had “made a scene” not for the money but as a matter of principle: The temple ought to have been closed during renovations. …

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