This process manifests itself in different ways. For example, what I encounter and want to talk about today is the inconspicuous, quiet substitution of “want” for “must.” How a child’s curiosity turns into a stale world. How only ashes remain from the fire in the eyes. How the will to live is replaced by adaptation to conditions. I will speak from my own experience, for lack of a better one. The experience of an axial ascent along the spiral from inactivity to activity. Being immersed in a turbulent stream of fussy affairs and worldly obligations, I, as a rule, spend free time on rest expressed in escapism of varying degrees of destructiveness. I see no point in describing the details; I suppose everyone knows how their own escape from reality manifests itself. While the “storm” of fuss does not subside, one can only try to “stay afloat,” gnawing at oneself with quiet existential soul-searching and doubts about the chosen path. But any storm ends, and one can, as they say, “exhale.” Escapism, previously forced to hide in the corners and cracks of a busy schedule, can now sprawl out languidly for many hours and days. If one managed to lock the voice of ambition in a soundproofed room, this time passes quite unnoticed and painlessly.

But with each passing day, the sofa seems less and less comfortable, one has to toss and turn more often, the temperature is either too hot or too cold, the body no longer relaxes in relaxation but aches and tingles from lack of movement, dry eyes at three in the morning become nauseating. So gradually, food delivery is replaced by trips to the store, during which the thought of going to the sports ground first only flickers, and then becomes obsessively enticing. In a person who is in a state of a “driven mare,” from which all juices have been squeezed out, the will to life begins to reawaken. Warm-up at the sports ground is replaced by full-fledged workouts, which entail improved nutrition and sleep schedule. Scrolling through social networks does not interfere with ambitions, is not expelled from life by a volitional decision, but simply becomes boring. It is replaced by reading books. It fills one with new thoughts and ideas that spill out into deep dialogue, a reflective note, or a published essay. In short, a “push-off from the bottom” occurs.

All these processes happen absolutely naturally; there is no heroic act of will. Nature, albeit distorted but preserving a divine silhouette, awakens and breathes in a taste for life, calls to contemplate and create. Being begins to circulate organically through the mind, heart, and spirit. This flow of life washes away the dirt accumulated in the soul and fills it with the joy of co-being. The desire to live as such is expressed in a creative act. Adaptation to reality is replaced by its formation.

In this life impulse, new projects begin, new horizons open up, new obligations are taken on, which over time again become overwhelming. Again, what began as a pure irrational desire, the creation of what is “wanted,” is replaced by the drudgery of what is “necessary.” Again, the softly and suffocatingly enveloping “must” drains energy and strength. Thus begins a new turn from “must” to “want,” from activity to inactivity.

1. Material
2. Formal
3. Efficient
4. Final

The first is the prime matter from which everything is formed, the substratum, the bearer—like the glass from which a bottle is blown. This material substratum is so undefined that it contains nothing but pure potentiality and is devoid of any actuality.

The formal cause is what makes a particular substance what it is, including all the attributes pertaining to that bottle: coldness, static hardness, fragility, transparency, and so on.

The efficient cause is the creating or activating factor that unites form and matter into a single substance—such as the glassblower, together with their artisan tools, using them to blow a bottle from the material, constrained by its properties.

The final cause is the purpose. This is the ultimate goal, the function, and the meaning of a given thing—the existence, use, or good for which it is intended.

This structuring of being is not limited only to human artifacts.

Christian thought could delineate another, quite explicitly defined, type of causality—the ontological cause, which requires no substratum for creation but is capable of creating from nothing. The infinite and eternal source of being, which grants existence to every contingent thing and to the universe, without which even the very possibilities of things cannot exist.

The most crucial property of a relationship is development; relationships either develop or stagnate at a certain stage. The ultimate goal of any relationship is building love. But not all relationships must strive toward a specific goal, nor must all relationships develop at all—this is absolutely normal.

For example, relationships with colleagues at work are a fairly superficial level, which in most cases remains at the status of “acquaintances.” But every person should have a small number of truly deep relationships in their life, which strive in their development toward eternity. The ultimate goal of such relationships, as already stated, is true, full-fledged love. However, the development of love between a man and a woman looks different. Same-sex relationships, firstly, have a limit in the degree of closeness because the participants are of the same sex, and consequently, they will occupy identical basic roles. At a sufficiently deep level of closeness, this naturally leads to conflicts or to the suppression (possibly quite conscious and acceptable) of the nature of one of the partners. Relationships between a man and a woman, however, have access to the maximum depth of closeness.

Secondly, in same-sex relationships, due to the limitations stated above, developing love does not require: A – exclusivity, B – physicality. This means that I, as a man, can develop and deepen love in friendship without physical contact and without harm to other relationships. The same applies to female friendship. But the same cannot be said about relationships between a man and a woman. In them, love without sexuality, without intimacy, and without exclusivity is not full-fledged. But also without genuine friendship, without respect and care, without personal freedom—love between a man and a woman will not be full-fledged either.

Let’s try to draw a conditional boundary: unlike friendship, love between a man and a woman involves a feeling of unity and kinship not only on psychological and spiritual levels but also on the physical, bodily level. There is mutual attraction, a mutual “growing into” each other’s lives, feelings, thoughts, future plans, and memories of the past, creating a sense of Co-Being of such scale and depth that friendly relationships cannot compare. We can add to this joint household management (the home as a reflection of love), mutual responsibility of a different quality than in friendship. Also, love between a man and a woman presupposes: inclusion in each other’s family systems, respect for family and traditions, sexual relations as the fulfillment of love, and having children as the continuation of love into the next generation. And all of this, of course, pertains to love that includes friendship but is more than it.

Thus, the relationship between a man and a woman is the union that can go the furthest in the degree of love, acceptance, and closeness, combining the Greek concepts of ἔρως (eros), φιλία (philia), and ἀγάπη (agape). But such a union must begin with friendship and is not obligated to go beyond it. However, in such a friendship, it is necessary to set boundaries and be prepared for the fact that these relationships will find it difficult to develop fully.

Let’s provide examples of some difficulties and dangers that one may encounter in such relationships. For instance, a person cannot always correctly identify their own motives or notice changes in their own motivation. For some, friendship can become a screen behind which it is easy to hide, even from oneself, the genuine desire to emotionally bind the other person, make them dependent, and, by manipulating friendly feelings, achieve intimate closeness. So, the first danger is that we may not understand our own motives very accurately. We may think we are friends, while subtly, unnoticed by us, different feelings—romantic, sexual—may arise. The line can be very thin. There is another danger. It’s clear that friendship is a close, intimate relationship that can develop into romantic feelings. It’s wonderful if friendship grows into infatuation, then love, and marriage. But if this marriage is impossible for any reason, then this friendship can become a source of deep emotional suffering. Unfortunately, this very often happens.

If your friend suddenly turns out
Neither friend nor foe, just — so;
If you cannot figure out,
Whether he’s good or bad, —
Pull the guy up the mountain — take the risk!
Don’t leave him there alone:
Let him be roped to you as one —
There you’ll learn who he is.

If the guy in the mountains ain’t much,
If he suddenly buckles and quits,
Steps on the glacier — and slumps,
Makes a misstep — and yells, —
Then he’s a stranger by your side,
Don’t you scold him — drive him away.
They don’t take such men up high,
And they don’t sing songs of such guys.

But if he didn’t whine, didn’t moan;
Though sullen and angry, he strode,
And when you fell from the cliff’s height,
He groaned, but he held the line;
If he marched with you as to war,
Stood drunk with joy on the peak, —
Then on him you may rely
As you would upon yourself!

Vladimir Vysotsky,  Soviet singer-songwriter, poet, and actor.

“Song about a friend”.

In youth, accumulate expertise, and later – implement it. If you start implementing your weak expertise while young, you’ll waste time, earn almost no money, and end up with nothing.

Imagine we’re choosing between ML and business. Both are more or less interesting to us.

ML appears more complex and fundamental than business. Especially research trajectories, like ML-Research. Learning to draw Excel tables can always be done later. Your own business might not even require any specific skills. Of course, there’s complexity here too; it requires expertise, understanding business processes, and so on. But still, the level of abstraction and the fundamentality of the concepts are different. Descending to a lower simpler level is always possible, but ascending – no.

Furthermore, lifespan today allows you not to dedicate your entire life to one career. Nothing stops you from working in ML for 20 years, achieving success there, and then, if you feel like it, going into business for another 20 years to reach high positions there too.

Now, it’s time to discuss the most significant aspect of this question.

Any logical arguments and reasoning on this matter weigh nothing compared to pleasure, interest, and fire in the eyes. Life cannot be meaningful and happy when split in two:

• From 9 to 19 – work; life begins in the evening
• 5 days a week – work; the remaining 2 days to “live”
• 6 months – work; the vacation month – finally living for yourself

Jack London’s book “Burning Daylight” serves as an excellent illustration. The main character there wasn’t some capitalism-chained office rat, forced by life to slave away at a job he hated and escape to his dacha on weekends. He’s a successful businessman with multi-million dollar wealth. Still, his life split into alcoholic oblivion in the evenings and daytime hustle. And his state of being was, accordingly, lost and clouded.

Therefore, the factor that outweighs any arguments of reason is interest, it’s passion, it’s the fire in the eyes and the thrill of the process. The choice must favor the profession that your soul gravitates towards. And if there isn’t one, you need to search.

And here, by “search,” I mean not just trying as many different things as possible, though that is also necessary. But the point isn’t to exhaustively sift through dozens of professions hoping one will turn out to be “the one.” Such things need to be sought not from the outside, but from within.. You can try every occupation in the world and find nothing. What matters is only how something resonates inside. That childlike passion isn’t hidden in the subject of study, but in the prism of inner perception. In childhood, we built dams out of snow and directed streams in spring. This, of course, is not ML research or Strategic Management, but how different the state was: joy, happiness, feeling alive, fullness. You can discover the prism of your life’s perception within yourself; that’s what I call “searching.” And you can work on it.

Summary of aspects in every thing:

1. Unity as such – the world’s unity.
2. Unchanging – substance, essence, being, ideal, meaning.
3. Changing – mode, manifestation, accidents, phenomenon, existence, real, matter.
4. Unity of unchanging and changing – the thing itself.

Without the unchanging, we could neither think nor derive laws about the world.

The unchanging in humans is often called soul. The soul is:

1. Life principle (self-motion—contains cause of motion within itself).
2. Principle of bodily form (the aforementioned unity principle).
3. Inner world, consciousness. Principle of inner psychic unity.
4. Purpose-realizing principle.

The soul is a synthesis of changing and unchanging: mutable through motion, yet immutable through unifying matter. This synthesis means change within fixed limits. Things remain themselves until exceeding their semantic boundary. (A human crossing this boundary becomes superhuman—transcending ontology and losing original meaning, i.e., dying).

Ice example: Molding ice preserves its “ice” meaning. Melting it into water or steam destroys “ice” but preserves “water element” meaning. Why?

• When ice melts, its meaning remains unchanged—we don’t call liquid water “ice.” Matter flows between meanings.
• Matter embodies broader meanings (“water element” encompasses ice/water/steam).

4. Ultimately, all meanings embody the universal concept of “Being” (Сущее).

This applies only to non-living things, indifferent to their definition—lacking subjectivity to claim meaning as their own. Living nature differs: the soul gathers matter into a specific form (its meaning) and actively maintains it. A living being cares about its definition—thus striving to preserve its form.

Therefore, the soul—whose primary principle is eternity/immutability—seeks to manifest this principle in its material emanation.

— But God doesn’t exist. — objected Akuan

— Then what are we talking about now?

— About God. And that certainly doesn’t mean He exists.

— I’m not yet saying He actually exists. But at the very least, as the subject of our discussion here in this dialogue, He is. Otherwise, what would we be talking about? — said Anselm, then added with a Greek accent — Friend Akuan, do you call this shop God?

— No.

— Maybe this pillar?

— Of course not.

— Then what?

— Some omnipotent being. I suppose that’s the simplest definition. — replied Akuan

— And I agree with that — nodded Anselm and continued — Akuan, doesn’t it seem logical to you that if, even for an instant, such an omnipotent being were to attain Being—in any form: be it at the ocean’s depths, in a star’s core, between protons in an atom, or in some eccentric’s fantasy—if this being is truly omnipotent, that infinitely small moment of time would suffice for it to break free from any confinement, to appear at every point in space, to destroy the entire universe, and to do what we cannot even conceive. A single drop of Being falling on the cold cheek of God sleeping in Nothingness would be enough to awaken Him for eternity. At the very least, today we’ve spilled that drop.