Comment by a-saleh

I am from former ost-block (weird it still has weight even 35+ years later) and my grandpa was Palestinian. The overal feeling is, that this was always the case. Sometimes we win some, sometimes there is prosperity and oasis of stability but in general, it is mostly chaos, even if it seems stable.

People in protesting in 1988 thought communist politburo is here to stay forever and maybe we get concessions, iron curtain fell year or so later.

It does feel more stressful as I have a kid and a house and a mortgage.

And maybe it works out and I remember my greatgrandma who built her her with her husband in late 1920's and the hous survived a world war and two occuppations and her daughter inherited it could sell it and lived off of it for decade in her pension.

And maybe it works out differently and I remember my grandpa where he had to run from his home country and would never see the house his grew up in but died in a nice flat with big family that cared about him.

Everything apart from global termonuclear war or literal paperclip-scenario level AI take-over feels survivable. And those are real risks. Like, that is the reason I celebrate Stanislav Petrov day!

Apart from that ... I am lucky I live in the city where musicians still play live and tickets to small venues are under 10 Eur and people still dance. So I dance. It helped me through my divorce, it helps me keep my current relationship alive, it helped me find community both local and across europe. It was nice to go to a small gig of an unknown bluesband in London and commending the guy who organized that for nice event and he went "Oh, where are you from? Ha, I have friends from there, we danced in Vienna!".