From the author: An essay on the topic of existential therapy, published on my website and in the blogosphere. I remember a quote from one of the characters in the film “It Doesn’t Hurt Me.” Speaking about harmony in life, he said: “The main thing in this life is to find your own and calm down.” There is something similar in this to the already hackneyed title of one famous book - “How to stop worrying and start living.” Finding peace here is one of the main conditions for happiness. We calm down when we get a feeling of predictability of life, insurance against various risks, closeness with people important to us and the implementation of our life plans. To achieve this, we make certain efforts, work at it and call it a responsible life position. But in life there are such givens that are an integral part of all human existence. When confronted with them, a person experiences an inevitable internal conflict. There are only four of these givens of existence. The inevitability of death, freedom, loneliness and the absence of a common meaning of life for everyone. Many, many disorders with which people come to see a psychotherapist are ultimately associated with a person’s collision with these givens of life. There is no universal way to find harmony with them; each person can only find it himself. But an adult is often so distracted by the everyday bustle of the outside world that he completely stops looking into the inner world. Oddly enough, children are much more sensitive, aware and advanced in this regard. There is a wonderful book by the author Mikhail Dymov called “Children Write to God.” In it, the author collected questions from many young schoolchildren from 6 to 10 years old, addressed to God. The author simply asked the children: “What would you like to ask God?”, “What would you like to ask God?” and “What would you like to tell God?” As a result, he managed to receive more than three thousand responses. Completely unique and amazing, at times. Some of them are very consonant with the life topics that were written about above. Perhaps, by reading the thoughts of children, adults will be able to discover something very important for themselves... The inevitability of death. It would seem that this is the most obvious fact. We are able to see the light and enjoy the day, but at the same time, we understand that one day this light will go out for us and life will end. This fact should be easy enough to come to terms with. And from the fact of recognizing one’s own mortality, life becomes much richer and fuller. But many people, consciously or unconsciously, which is more often, try in every possible way to avoid this recognition. Someone goes into all sorts of neurotic fears, the root of most of them is the fear of death. Someone lives, clinging to the illusion of their own exclusivity, which can be expressed something like: “This simply cannot happen to me, because I...”. Children, as it turns out, can openly and boldly touch this inevitable reality, look at it directly, trying to find their answer: Can I not die, huh? Yulia, 1st grade. Everyone says that the world will end in 2000. What's next? Maxim, 3rd grade. How does the day die? Because of old age? Leva 3rd grade. God, how long do I need to live? Olya, 1st grade. There is so much trouble and suffering on Earth that people don’t feel sorry for dying? Igor, 4th grade. How long will my cat Puma live? Stasik, 2nd grade. Why do people die for nothing? Nadya, 3rd grade. Lord, may my mother be immortal. Rose, 3rd grade. Dear God, may I live as long as my mother wants. Vera, 1st grade. More life, Lord! Misha, 3rd grade. Freedom. Usually, people associate something pleasant with freedom. But freedom is also the absence of external boundaries of the surrounding world, set by someone from the outside. Human society creates all sorts of laws to bring certainty to our lives and reduce anxiety. But life largely consists of uncertainty, and there are no clear boundaries and rules, such as there were at school. Someone is trying to cope with this freedom by taking upon themselves.