Pavel woke up at three in the morning with the thought that he was a counterfeit person. As if the real Pavel had gotten lost somewhere along the way.

In the darkness, he fumbled for his phone and typed into the search bar: “how to know if you don’t know how to live.” Google suggested depression tests. Pavel closed the browser.

At work, he was considered a successful manager. At home - a caring husband. At the gym - a promising bodybuilder. The problem was that Pavel knew the truth: he was just very convincingly pretending to be someone who knows what he’s doing. Like a mannequin in a store window: dressed in the right suit, frozen in a confident pose, but inside - emptiness and wire.

• You didn’t sleep again? - his wife asked in the morning.

• Was reading about impostor syndrome, - Pavel lied. In reality, he’d spent three hours watching a video of a raccoon trying to wash cotton candy that kept dissolving in its paws. A little creature and its sincere, tragic battle with the laws of physics.

At the quarterly results presentation, Pavel suddenly stopped in the middle of a slide with charts.

• Does anyone remember pretending to be asleep as a kid so your parents would carry you to bed?

The room froze. His boss adjusted her glasses.

• Well, that’s what I’m doing right now. Only pretending to be competent so they’ll carry me to retirement.

Someone laughed nervously. Pavel continued:

• These charts? I drew them yesterday in an hour. They mean nothing. Like my tie. And your ties. We’re all playing a game here of “who can most convincingly pretend to understand what’s going on.” And the winner gets a promotion and the right to pretend to understand at a higher level.

His boss stood up:

• Pavel, you need a vacation.

• I need an instruction manual, - he replied. - Like for a vacuum cleaner. “Press button to activate happiness mode.” “In case of existential crisis, contact the service center.”

They sent him to the corporate psychologist. She turned out to be a woman with tired eyes and a cactus on the windowsill.

• Tell me what’s bothering you.

• I’ve been functioning on autopilot for about ten years. I get up, brush my teeth, go to work, come back, sleep. Sometimes in between there’s sex or a trip to the movies. But that’s also part of the program. Like those robot vacuums - bumped into a wall, turned left.

• And how do you feel about that?

Pavel laughed:

• And you? You just asked a question from a textbook. You’re on autopilot too. Only your route is listening to people like me.

The psychologist took off her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose:

• You know what? To hell with protocol. Yes, I’m on autopilot. I’ve been listening to the same stories for fifteen years. Everyone has the same diagnosis - we have no idea how to live. We just close our eyes to it. We’re all like that raccoon with the cotton candy. Trying to hold onto something important, but it dissolves right in our hands. And we don’t understand the rules of the game, but we keep rinsing new pieces in the water, hoping this time it’ll work out.

Pavel froze. He looked at her, and a chill of recognition ran down his spine.

• Cotton candy… - he whispered.

The psychologist’s eyes widened for a second, and then a warm, sad smile appeared in them.

• Yes. Watched that video last night. And you know what I realized? The raccoon approaches the water with hope every time. Every single time. It doesn’t give up, doesn’t fall into depression, doesn’t go to a psychologist. Just takes a new piece and tries again.

• But it doesn’t understand what’s happening.

• And we do? - the psychologist smiled.

They were silent, and this silence was the most honest part of their session.

The cactus on the windowsill lived for real - slowly dying from lack of water, but honestly, without pretensions to something more.

• Want some advice? - the psychologist asked.

• Sure.

• Stop trying to cope. It’s a trap. To cope means to win, to conquer, to control. But life isn’t an opponent. It’s a dance with a partner who occasionally steps on your toes. And your task isn’t to cope with the dance, but to keep moving, even with crushed toes.

Pavel left the psychologist and sat on a bench by the office. He untied his tie, pulled it off his neck, crumpled it and shoved it in his pocket. Then he took out his phone and deleted all productivity apps. All self-development courses. All motivational podcasts.

In the evening, his wife asked:

• How was your day?

• I screwed up the presentation. They sent me to a psychologist. She doesn’t know how to live either. We watered her cactus. Then I sat on a bench and fed pigeons.

His wife poured him some wine:

• Finally a normal day.

They drank. Then more. Then had sex right there in the kitchen, knocking over the sugar bowl. The sugar crunched under his back like snow.

• We’re bad at dealing with life, - Pavel said.

• Terribly bad, - his wife agreed. - Let’s be bad at it together.

And that was the most honest thing he’d heard in ten years.