I feel the need to control it, even if I can't.but in my adulthood, I've learned that doing so does more harm than good. I've found myself worrying about the mistakes I've made instead of doing something to change my future.be conscious about the decisions you make, but don't feel like you need to steer the outcome to your favor each time. the more you focus on what you can control and not if it will go your way, the more you can be present in living a meaningful life.sending you all lots of love and peaaaaaaaaaace!https://stan.store/thezurkieshow
Chapter 1: Why is losing control so scary?
You can't control everything in your life, and I don't think you should. I don't think you should. I have had the most peace in my life when I have let go of everything that I cannot control, and I have allowed myself to do these two things. Just be. What? Just be? How can you just be? There are a lot of things in this life to do. There are credit cards to apply for.
There are crushes to get ghosted by. There are accolades, things that we look for. We want to get recognized for the hard work we do. We want to feel like our life has some kind of importance to it. But oftentimes we let go of the most simple thing existing. Because we want control. We want control. That's really what it is. For me, a big thing was I wanted to control the perception of others.
I wanted to seem like I had everything figured out. I wanted to seem like I was perfect. And I am not. I am not perfect. I am flawed. I get angry. I recently had a crash out where I dropped a pan on the floor in my house and I kicked the pan into the oven and I shattered the pan and I felt embarrassed and I felt like a loser and I felt like I was a man child.
But I also recognize that that was a moment and that moment doesn't really define me as a human being for the rest of my life. I'm just going to be. I'm just going to exist. And I'm going to take that moment with a grain of salt.
Now, was I pissed off, you know, having to buy a new pan at the grocery store and like awkwardly telling my roommates what happened to the old pan because they liked the old pan? Yes. Yes, it was really embarrassing. But that in itself taught me a lesson that maybe visibly showing my anger and transferring my anger from the foot of mine to the pan was not a constructive way of using my anger.
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Chapter 2: What does it mean to just be?
Maybe it could have been better to actually take that moment and be like, why was I really mad? I was really mad because I was cleaning the house and people weren't helping me clean the house and I should have asked for help and I didn't. I did not. So did I even have the right to be mad? I mean, you know, it was cool to be mad, but honestly, it was pretty, it was pretty avoidable.
I've learned that there is something special about existing and obviously we cannot just exist all of the time, right? What I mean by that is like you cannot just be present all the time. No, there are seasons of your life where you are going to need to focus. There are seasons of your life where you are going to need to lock in. and study for something, try to obtain a financial goal.
Chapter 3: How can we manage our anger constructively?
Maybe you're stressing about money this month and you have to sign up for DoorDash or something to make some extra bread. Yes, these are things you will deal with. But I think that we do not give ourselves the break and the grace to just be, bro. To just be. To just kick it with ourselves. To take a break. To relax. I was in the Uber today talking to a guy who designed clothes for a living.
It was super cool, super insightful. And one thing he mentioned was that he was reading the artist's way. I haven't read this book, but there's something about doing a artist date in the artist's way, which is like you take yourself out on a date. You go to some kind of museum, you go see a movie, you go listen to an album while you bike around your neighborhood, something like that.
And it's it's funny because I can't tell you the last time I really took like an artist's date for myself. I really enjoy films. I really enjoy movies. Actually, OK, I did take a break recently and I was about to rot at night after having like a long day of work. And I decided, you know what, I'm going to watch a movie that I've wanted to watch forever. Akira. Which is insane. Okay?
I don't know if you've seen Akira, but you think that movie is about bikes? Spoiler, the bikes are in the first half an hour to an hour of the movie. The rest of the movie is just... I'm not even going to spoil it. You should watch Akira. It's crazy. And I've heard that's like the tip of the iceberg when it comes to anime movies or just anime in general. Like, what is going on, dude?
Do I need to tap in? Is Unk, you know? Is this being gatekept for a reason? Like, what's going on? But anyways, it was a really good feeling to just be. I was sitting on my couch watching I had my laptop bumping the movie, you know. It was really nice. You don't have to be productive all the time. You don't have to feel like everything has to have a meaning to it. No, you can exist.
Like, you as a human being have the right to do that. I know that there is a pressure to be the optimal human being at every point in your life. And I get that life is precious, but you are missing out on a lot of the key parts of life if you don't just allow yourself to be. I see this a lot in the United States. This is an American, I think, Americanized way of thinking. You live to work.
A lot of people work a lot in the U.S. And it's interesting because growing up, I would split my time in the summer between the U.S. and Europe. I'm Polish. My family lives in Poland. And I would go and visit my grandparents that lived in Poland every summer. They work to live. It's different. The culture feels as if there's more of an emphasis on intentionality and spending time with people.
Like, people go to the water park during the week to swim. People go and walk around their hometown or wherever they live because there's a little, we call it in Polish, a rynek, but it's like a town square. People hang out. There's this idea that you socialize. That's like a thing you do.
And it's really beautiful and I really admire it because as I've gotten older, it feels like now I'm encompassing more of this. I live to work, but the more, the more I work, the less I am able to just be. And the less I'm able to just like be bored. I'm like never bored because there's always something to do.
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Chapter 4: What role does culture play in our perceptions of work and existence?
It's not like you can just hang out all day and... not do anything. I mean, if you can, dude, if you are unemployed for like full time, dude, dude, awesome. But I can't do that. I got bills. I got, uh, the, the Chili's on Klarna to pay off. Oh no, no, no. I'm, I'm trolling. I'm trolling, but it's weird. It's weird. It's also this whole idea that we don't have time.
You know what I'm talking about? It's like we really are trying to be squeezed all of the time to do something because time is escaping and you don't have a lot of it. Even though we're so comfortable with burning time burning time, like, when we know we should be present. It's, ah, it's weird. I saw it with some of the older people in my life, like,
They knew that their time was kind of, you know, up. That it was kind of coming to a close. And then they got hooked on, like, short form stuff. You know what I'm saying? On the reels. And they were locked in, bro. They were consuming like crazy. Don't get me wrong. I want to consume stuff when I'm older.
Like I want to be watching films until I'm old and I want to be listening to the new music that drops, you know, in my VR headphones in my 20 year old avatar, you know, when I'm 85. No, dude. In the future, in the metaverse, I will have the avatar of the age that I am. I have no shame in that. I think aging is a beautiful thing. There's no part of me that's like, I want to be young forever.
Hell no. Dude, when I get old, I'm going to do old head stuff. I'm going to have like, you know, some ugly sneakers and I'm going to rock them like they're the coolest thing in the world. I'm going to get lost in the grocery store because I don't know where I'm going. Dude, I'm like so hyped for that. I think it'll be a vibe. I think it'll be a vibe. Are you all afraid of getting older?
I feel like you're afraid of getting older when you're young when you're young because it's like you're adding new things you're adding responsibilities you know like you have to figure out what health insurance is and how to get a dentist I'm like looking at my teeth and I'm like yellow key that looks like a cavity oh no I don't know I you got to take care of yourself too
When you're younger, when you're in school, you just have gym classes baked into everything you do. Dude, I haven't gone to the gym in months because I have not made it a thing for myself to do. I've just been like, nah, I'm busy. What? Yeah, it's odd. Odd thing. But... Maybe we don't want to just exist, just be, because it also means that we have to sit with our own thoughts.
And we actually have to process what's going on in this cooked mind of ours. We have to realize that we're actually... Low-key sad. Or hurting. Or... You know, that thing that... Happened to us a few years ago that we didn't really think about. Well, actually... It's actually affecting us like today. There's... There's no clock on processing your emotions. It's different for everybody.
You know, I had a pretty traumatic event happen to me when I was roughly like 18, 19. And I went to therapy for it. And it affected a lot of the way in which I interacted with relationships in my life. Not just intimate ones, but also friendships. Also just family. It was really something that messed me up. I didn't finish processing it. Until two years after it happened. And it's weird.
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Chapter 5: How can we process trauma and its effects on our lives?
But that's really where you, where you, that's really where you figure out what you're made of, like what your character is built on. That's where you learn to just be and what being means to you. And what are you defined as when everything hits the fan? What do you believe in? What are the characteristics about yourself that you know you can embody every single day?
Every runner knows this moment when it just clicks. When your legs just go along, the pain stops, the doubts are gone and you only feel the runner's high. That's the reason why you get up so early. Why a little rain doesn't stop you. Why running becomes a ritual. So run and feel the runner's high. Go wild and learn more about running at puma.de.
Because on the good days when everything's flying, it's like, that's awesome. You're good. But on the days where you are being tested by literally everything, what do you have to show for it? This week, I went from hosting a film festival to going to my grandma's funeral to then being invited to an event in beautiful Los Angeles.
And I was, I didn't expect any of it two months ago, let alone a month ago. And now I'm here. And I've cried, I've laughed, I've cried tears of joy. I've felt incredibly grateful and I've felt like a part of me has left me. But the one thing I've allowed myself to do through all of this that I don't think in the past younger Zerky would be able to do is I just, I just allowed myself to be me.
That's it. I was like, I am not going to judge how I feel. I'm not going to judge how long it takes me to grieve. I'm not going to judge how long it takes me to accept the reality, both the good and the bad. I am just here to be. And I just go through it. Like one step at a time. And I'm doing all right. I'm doing okay. Am I doing incredibly well? Oh my, I'm over the moon. Yeah. Moments.
But then I'm on the plane, you know, sobbing my like sobbing buckets because I'm listening to Elvis Presley. And that was my grandma's favorite artist. exist for me. You don't have to do too much more. You really don't. And your existence, your just being, it can, it can be hanging out after you've worked a 12 hour shift in your apartment, watching Netflix, chilling.
Your just be can be going on a hike with a friend that you haven't talked to in a while. Your just be can be drawing or sketching out a beautiful landscape, painting something. It's about finding what that is for you. What does existing and feeling good about being, frankly, alive mean to you? Because if there's one thing I've learned so far in life, from a lot of people and from my own,
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Chapter 6: What is the importance of seeking help?
We're all going to suffer. We're all going to go through adversity. We're all going to experience things. But it's about how we experience them. How we decide to view these things. And also just like how we experience them in our own skin. Just be. Just be. But I need to be. You just need to be. There you go. You just need to be. You don't have to be X, Y, and Z. You just need to be.
It's abstract, but it's really true. Maybe you don't even have any clue as to who you are yet. That's a great thing. A lot of people look at that and think, oh my gosh, you're cooked, you're done. No. No, that's a great thing. It means you have a lot of exploring to do. No matter your age, you have a lot of things to learn. You have a lot of things to try for the first time.
You know how many people would want to be in your shoes who have lived their entire life trying to be somebody they were not? If you are feeling this discomfort now, if you feel like, dude, I don't know, but this is not me. Being at this college is not me. Being in school is not me. Being a part of this club is not me. Trying to fit in with this group is not me.
Then your job is to just be and see where that takes you. But a lot of us won't even go that far. We won't even go that far to question everything. We'll just accept that reality is the way it is and people are putting this pressure on me so I'm going to be that person. And it's really unfortunate.
Because I think a world in which people are truly expressing themselves and they're truly embodying the characteristics that they feel are true. That's a world I want to live in. And right now, we don't have that. And that's okay. I'm not complaining. There's two sides to everything, you know. There's a bright side, there's a dark side. There's always going to be a yin and yang.
But I think you should know that your job is to just be, man. I think we overcomplicate this. I think we try to set these expectations on ourselves that are just ludicrous. Luda! What if your day just looked like existing, writing in your journal, hanging out with some good friends, doing your job, doing your work, coming home, maybe going to the gym.
And what if that actually does make you feel content and it makes you feel happy? Why are you like stressing that that isn't enough? I think it is enough unless you feel called to do more and you feel like you're not rising up to the plate. That's a different story. That's a completely different story. And if you feel that is the case, stop lying to yourself. You got to figure it out.
You got to add more to your plate. If you're feeling like, dude, like, yeah, I do all those things, but I want to do more. I really want to put myself out there more. I'm introverted. I want to be more extroverted or I'm doing way too much and I want to downscale and I don't want to have all this stuff on my plate. It is your job to explore that.
And if you don't change, if you don't even try to fix it, it won't change. And you will be the same. And you will just be. This is still true. But maybe you won't be comfortable with who you are and what you're doing. And Zerky Show... That's a rough time. I'm telling you, I was there. I've played these games before. The best thing you can do is just explore who you are.
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