How to survive in an endless race.

In life, sometimes, it’s so difficult for us to stop. We are in a hurry all the time, solving problems on the go, which are layered on each other. And this haste becomes the cause of even greater problems.

The rate of life has increased dramatically in recent decades. We barely have the opportunity to be alone with our loved ones, with ourselves and with God. We often simply pronounce even the prayer rule without thinking about the meaning of the words we utter.

The further it goes, the more it is –the decisions which are made hastily, under the influence of emotions or instincts. And the faster we run in this endless race, the harder it is for us to resist unverified or false information and manipulation. We stop belonging to ourselves. And hence all our difficulties with ourselves, with others and, as a consequence, with God.

Think about it: we are almost never alone with ourselves. Even when we are completely alone in a locked room, we are immediately pulled out of solitude by the signal of another messenger – and we hurry to check what an important message has come to us. But is it important actually?

And this, of course, is not a reason to sin against technological progress. It's not about messengers as such. It's about us. We deprive ourselves of solitude, calm thoughts, and communion with God by ourselves.

It may even seem that a person deliberately rushes into this race 24/7 in order not to meet with himself, not to meet with God. Like it’s an attempt to hide from the most important thing. But this is an illusion. The more we hide from the most important thing, the more we are overwhelmed by waves of unsolved problems and at some point there comes a feeling of overwhelming fatigue, discouragement and apathy. It’s familiar feeling, isn’t it?

Many people in the world are trying to fight this problem with the help of psychotherapists, spending a lot of money and not always achieving results. And someone aggravates the problem by going into drunkenness or something even more dangerous.

But in fact, this problem can be solved with not such excessive efforts, if we have not let it. We just need to allocate ourselves minutes of silence in our rigid rhythm. Let's stop, pause, turn off the sound of our phones. Let's stay in silence for at least a few minutes. After all, we can hear God only in silence. Silence is the best thing for prayer. And this silence is not always acoustic. If we learn to feel the presence of the Lord, we will be able to feel spiritual silence even in a noisy crowd. But to do this, you need to start at least small.

Recorded by Natalia Goroshkova