In peaceful times, you live in a multiplicity of possible worlds. You can escape from one of them into another one. From a daytime world of routine into a nighttime world of pleasures. From a work climate of paved cities into a holiday climate on the ocean coast. From the world here-and-now into the world there-and-then, watching a late-night TV series about the Borgia or the Medici.

This multiplicity vanishes in war. All of a sudden, you cannot escape. You cannot get on a plane and fly away. You cannot open a book and read it just for pleasure. You cannot watch movies late at night. In your mind, there is no space for movies. In your ideas of geography, there is no space for warm, happy places. Even when someone offers you to go on a trip, you just shrug your shoulders — what’s the purpose? Suddenly, you start treating your country like a baby you cannot abandon under any circumstances. Suddenly, you feel that everything will collapse the moment you cross the border. The planets will stop moving.

The idea of possible worlds can be born only in peaceful times. Leibniz, its creator, was possible only in Europe after the religious wars. In Europe that could finally sigh with relief. This idea could not have been born, for example, in Shakespeare. In the space of Shakespeare’s plays — just like in the space of plays by Sophocles, Racine, or Lesia Ukrainka — there are no possible worlds. There is only the ruthless reality you cannot escape. This reality will kill you sooner or later. It will crush your hopes. And you hate it for its cruelty. And you love it, too — because it is your only one. You cannot run away from it. You have to bear its name.