Leaving asceticism behind and returning to the world: a generation's unease

Leaving asceticism behind and returning to the world: the price of reintegrating

What happens when someone who has spent years living on the margins decides to return to ordinary life and discovers they no longer fit in? The account describes it without embellishment: fights, a feeling of being an impostor, the impression that one's own consciousness is superior while blaming the surroundings. "It was my decision, but I regret having imagined my life badly," he sums up. It is not an isolated case: it is the pattern of someone who breaks with a discipline — religious, ideological or simply personal — and lands in a world they no longer recognise.

The return to the world after years of discipline

The starting point is renunciation. Years of order, of control, of giving instructions. Then, the return to everyday life and the shock: two fights, the feeling of being an impostor and the suspicion that the problem is not the world but oneself. "Either I am unbearable or I am the one who cannot stand the world," he wonders. Age appears as a variable: what used to be handled with composure now irritates.

The most frequent response points to the idea that the unease is not pathology but sanity. "You're simply sane. Only a madman could feel comfortable in a society like this," comes the reply. The diagnosis is completed with a prescription: flexible boundaries, not total isolation. Someone who lives between city and countryside, raises animals and plants and keeps his dependence on society to a minimum, frames it as balance, not escape.

Living between two irreconcilable worlds

The protagonist himself acknowledges the miscalculation: "My mistake was opening things up too much." His thesis is that both worlds — the withdrawn one and the social one — are irreconcilable, and that he is stuck in between. It is an uncomfortable position and, according to his experience, one with no clean solution.

The attempt at integration involved taking an interest in current political and social affairs. The result, according to his account, was failure. The question he leaves open is whether he will return to asceticism, with an added antiestéticar: in the event of war, artists end up as victims. The conversation then drifts towards substance use and retreat practices.

Fasting, substances and the toll of retreat practices

One participant describes the attempt to repeat fasts that years earlier had given him vitality. Now, according to that account, with a weight-loss drug in the mix, the result was three weeks of barely eating and a visit to the emergency room because his body could not keep anything down. "It's no longer the same as when I did them years ago," he concludes. The practice that once energised him now wears him down.

As for psychedelic experiences, the account is clear: they have not been repeated since returning from France, and his current living situation makes them impossible, both because of his background and the context. Another voice warns against trusting the paranormal and cites a book that cautions that apparitions are unreliable. Scepticism towards the mystical also appears in someone who says he has contacted spirits and dismisses them as mind games.

The background noise: politics, chaos and detachment

The conversation does not close without the noise of current affairs. A voting recommendation appears — "Alvise seems like the best option" — alongside the confession that he does not believe in democracy. Another voice declares that asceticism no longer works and that the Matrix is boring, with a veiled mention of getting out of the way. Chaos is described as impossible to navigate under its own rules.

The most useful closing is not a conclusion but a fact: someone who had spent years giving orders discovers he can no longer tolerate other people's disorder. The question that remains is whether that is evolution or simple wear and tear. With these ingredients, the answer is not in the account.