Let's get acquainted! My name is Anton.
Amidst the flow of work tasks, family chores, quiet games with my daughter, and evening conversations with my wife, I've spent many years trying to find time to study ancient mythology. I'm interested in how our ancestors envisioned the structure of the world.
And the deeper I delve, the more I'm amazed by one simple thing. For ancient people, the world was understandable. They didn't know physics, chemistry, or psychology, but they knew something else: everything around us rests on four foundations – on the elements. Fire, Water, Earth, Air.
In old legends, water was often described as something fluid and patient. In fairy tales, heroes go to it for advice or throw wreaths into it to learn their fate. And in language, it's all become firmly established: remember our sayings like "waiting by the sea for weather" (waiting for something that may never happen), "much water has flowed under the bridge," or "as if he looked into the water" (meaning he predicted it accurately). We use these phrases without thinking, but they all point to the same thing – patience, the ability to wait, the capacity to see deeper than what lies on the surface. Water knows how to go around stones, to find a path even where there seems to be no way out. That's why they say: water will find a crack.
Have you noticed that children become calmer after bathing? I often think about this. Look: a bathtub is almost like a lake. The water is still there, without current, without fuss. And our children during the day are like turbulent mountain rivers: they race around, shout, get overwhelmed with emotions. But any river eventually flows into a lake. And the lake accepts it, calms it, dampens that turbulent energy. It will quiet any waterfall. It seems to me that this is exactly what happens every evening with our children.
And have you noticed how water affects your children? Maybe you have your own "water" rituals before bed?
For me, this is not just a beautiful metaphor. I see something real in it. Something our ancestors knew, and we have forgotten. In the following posts, I want to dig deeper – about fire, about earth, about air. And about how all of this connects to our children, to fatigue, to joy, to ordinary life.
If you're interested – come on in, I'd be happy to have you.