Two interviewers, a year apart, opened with the same question. Mariusz Mrzygłód put it most directly on Sztuka Równowagi: am I able to sacrifice my own life? The Very Nice Media interview asked the gentler version — from corporate to the front, how? Both times I gave the short answer, because that is what an interview has room for. This is the long one.

The short answer is not wrong, it is just incomplete

The short answer is: Russia invaded, I had a car and a passport, and I went. That is true. It is also the kind of true that explains nothing, because thousands of people had a car and a passport and did not go.

The fuller answer starts earlier, at a desk. My life looked correct from the outside. A well-paid job in finance at a global firm. Interesting travel. A calendar packed with hobbies. And a quiet voice at work asking why are you here, which I could not answer. I kept telling myself that if I knew what I would love to do, I would do it, and because I did not know, I did nothing. That inaction is what led to my second burnout.

What burnout actually taught me

People expect the lesson of burnout to be about rest. Mine was about honesty. Burnout was not my body objecting to the hours. It was my body objecting to spending them on something I could not justify to myself.

Once you have felt that, you develop an intolerance for the gap between what you believe and what you are actually doing with your week. That intolerance is not a virtue. It is closer to an allergy. When the invasion started, the gap was suddenly enormous and very visible, and I could not sit inside it.

The part interviews skip

The honest thing about the question — am I able to sacrifice my life — is that I never framed it that way at the time. Nobody driving a van full of food is conducting a philosophical inquiry. You are thinking about fuel, about the checkpoint ahead, about whether the woman in the back seat has anywhere to go when you arrive.

The philosophy shows up afterwards, when a Polish television crew points a camera at you and asks you to explain yourself. And what I found, explaining myself, is that I had not been brave. I had simply stopped negotiating with myself. Those are different things, and confusing them is why so many people wait for courage that never arrives.

Why this matters if you are nowhere near a war

Almost nobody reading this is deciding whether to drive into Kharkiv. But a great many people are living in the gap — doing work they cannot justify, waiting to know what they would love before they let themselves move.

I want to say clearly that the waiting is the dangerous part. Not the wrong job. The waiting. I waited until my body made the decision for me, twice, and I would like fewer women to have to learn it that way.

You do not have to know what you would love in order to start. You only have to stop telling yourself that not knowing is a reason to stand still.