Everyone wants to be happy. “All people are the same by nature - everyone wants to be happy. Materials on the topic
7Quotes and Aphorisms 05.04.2018
Dear readers, you must admit that we all want to be happy - this is perhaps the main human desire. But can anyone give a precise definition of happiness? After all, we are all different, and everyone has their own happiness.
For some, happiness is when a secret desire comes true. Someone does not see himself happy without a family. For others, happiness is impossible without a successful career, and someone is happy because they are in love. Moreover, in different periods of life, happiness for the same person can be in different things, sometimes even completely opposite. And all this is reflected in aphorisms about happiness.
Remember the quote about the happiness of the heroine of the movie "We'll Live Till Monday"? “It's impossible to explain happiness… It's like sticking a sunbeam to paper…” But we'll still try.
It seems to me that the concept of happiness is best revealed not in dry definitions of explanatory dictionaries, but in quotes and aphorisms about happiness.
Reflections of great people about happiness
Many sages and artists have thought about what happiness is and how to achieve it. All of them, of course, agreed in one opinion - a person is the blacksmith of his own happiness and it depends only on ourselves whether we can be happy. Quotes from great people about happiness also convey to us the idea that sometimes our happiness is much closer than we think.
"Once in a lifetime, happiness knocks on everyone's door, but often this one sits in a nearby tavern and does not hear the knock."
Mark Twain
“Happiness is when you are understood, great happiness is when you are loved, true happiness is when you love.”
Confucius
“Happiness comes to those who seek it and think least of it. Happiness is not an object to search for; it's just a state. You don't have to follow happiness, it has to follow you. It should take you, not you him.”
John Burroughs
“Happiness is the same as with watches: the simpler the mechanism, the less often it deteriorates.”
“The hope of happiness, however deceitful, never harms a person, because it makes life easier.”
Lope de Vega
“If they were building a house of happiness, the largest room would have to be taken as a waiting room.”
Jules Renard
“The only happiness of a person is to be at his constant favorite business.”
Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko
“Happiness sells a great many things to impatient people, which it gives freely to the patient.”
Francis Bacon
Mikhail Prishvin
“I believe that happiness is the harmony between what we want from life and the reality in which we exist. When our expectations and reality match, we are happy. Only they coincide, to put it mildly, far from always.
Vladimir Yakovlev
Just read these lines... These are not just beautiful words. These happiness quotes with meaning are sure to make you think.
“Happiness begins with hatred for misfortune, with physiological disgust for everything that distorts, disfigures a person, with an internal organic repulsion from everything that whines, groans, sighs ...”
Maksim Gorky
“This is how fate sometimes plays with mortals: it either lifts them up, or plunges them into the abyss. And the world is arranged in such a way that sometimes a great misfortune is already enclosed in happiness.
Pierre Corneille
“Happiness has never placed a man on such a height that he does not need a friend.”
Lucius Anya Seneca
“Happy people don’t succeed: they are so in tune with themselves that they simply don’t care about anything else.”
Agatha Christie
"Happy is he who can see beauty in ordinary things, where others see nothing."
Camille Pizarro
“And there is such silence in my soul that it seems that you will suffocate from happiness ...”
Eldar Ryazanov
“Behind the door of a happy person, someone with a hammer should stand, constantly knock and remind that there are unhappy people and that after a short happiness, misfortune comes.”
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
“Perhaps, on the threshold of death, a horseshoe of happiness has been nailed.”
Stanislav Jerzy Lec
“Happiness excludes old age. Whoever retains the ability to see beauty does not grow old.”
Franz Kafka
Remember that sharp feeling of happiness that you experience only in childhood? It was then that the feeling of it is most piercing and brightest. Quotes about children and happiness will help us remember this time.
“As we age, we lose many important qualities. And one of them is the gift of being happy just like that. To catch small joys on a hook and look at them with delight for a long time.
Nadia Yasminska
“Children are immediately and naturally mastered with happiness, for by their very nature they themselves are joy and happiness.”
Victor Hugo
“You can’t teach a person to be happy, but you can educate him so that he is happy.”
Anton Makarenko
“Happiness is an imaginary state that was previously prescribed to the ancestors; now adults usually attribute it to children, and children to adults.
Thomas Sas
Unfortunately, it is impossible to return to childhood on your own. But our children can return us to it for a short time. After all, love for a child is one of the sharpest and most unforgettable moments of happiness.
“Happiness for mom is the smile of a baby that she wore under her heart for months.”
"A woman's most precious necklace is the arms of a hugging child."
"When children are born, order disappears in the house, money, peace, rest - and happiness comes."
"The best way to make children good is to make them happy."
Oscar Wilde
A sincere smile is a sign of happiness
When we are happy, we smile. Such a smile cannot be confused with a polite or welcoming one. From such a smile, the eyes shine, and the person is transformed. In quotes about a smile and happiness, this is very accurately reflected.
“Smile, even if you feel very bad, hurt and want to cry, smile for real, with sincere joy, straighten your shoulders and straighten up, as if you are happy and proud and want to sing with happiness. The body will believe and rejoice, maybe not immediately, but very quickly, it simply does not know how to really suffer when you sincerely smile. And after the body, the soul will again rejoice ... "
Maria Semenova
“Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it was."
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
"A cheerful expression is gradually reflected in the inner world."
Immanuel Kant
Briefly about happiness
Sometimes it doesn't take many words to describe your vision of happiness. Evidence of this is short quotes about happiness - very concise, but at the same time deep in meaning.
“To think that someone else can make you happy or unhappy is just ridiculous.”
Buddha
"The wise man forges his own happiness."
Titus Maccius Plautus
“There are a lot of shades in white. Happiness, like spring, changes its appearance every time.
André Maurois
"There is no complete happiness without an admixture of suffering."
William Shakespeare
“Happiness is like health: when it is there, you don’t notice it.”
Michael Bulgakov
"Happiness is pleasure without remorse."
“The face of the most evil person blooms when he is told that he is loved. So, this is happiness ... "
Lev Tolstoy
“There is and cannot be anything more terrible in the world than eternal happiness.”
Bernard Show
“How rarely we meet happiness ... What a pity that sometimes we cannot save it ...”
Yuri Kolchak
“Happiness is not an easy thing: it is difficult to find it in oneself and not easy to find outside oneself.”
Sebastien-Roche Nicolas de Chamfort
"Happiness has no comparative degree."
Joris de Bruyne
"Chronic happiness is as absent as never-melting ice."
Alexander Herzen
“It is not so much the thirst for happiness that torments us, but the desire to be known as lucky.”
François de La Rochefoucauld
“The only happiness in life is the constant striving forward.”
Emile Zola
"Who does not remember past happiness, that old man is already today."
Epicurus
Short quotes with a meaning about happiness once again confirm that happiness and loneliness are incompatible things.
Isuna Hasekura
"A person lives a real life if he is happy with someone else's happiness."
Johann Wolfgang Goethe
“Happiness is increased by sharing it with others.”
Julien Offrey de Lamettry
"Happiness in solitude is not complete happiness."
Alexandre Dumas father
“Bringing happiness to someone is happiness in itself.”
Eiji Mikage
"A person increases his happiness to the extent that he delivers it to others."
Jeremy Bentham
“By striving for the happiness of others, we find our own.”
Plato
"We have no right to consume happiness without producing it."
Bernard Show
About women's happiness
What is this - female happiness? Children? Favorite person? Career? Is it even possible to describe it in one word? One cannot. And a few can. It is these quotes about women's happiness - short, but capacious.
“The happiness of a man is called - I want, the happiness of a woman is called - he wants!”
Friedrich Nietzsche
“Women's happiness is the ability to move from one age to another. A woman has three ages - daughter, wife and mother.
Boris Akunin
“When you finally get what you wanted, it turns out that this is not at all what you wanted.”
Gertrude Stein
“If the woman is happy in the house, then the whole family is happy. If a woman is unhappy, no one is happy.”
How is women's happiness different from men's? Well, besides the classic "would be cute next to"? Sometimes a woman is made happy by completely unexpected things. Aphorisms about happiness with meaning will help us figure it out.
“Very often, a woman’s happiness does not come just because she has nothing to wear.”
“The most beautiful outfit for a woman is happiness. Wear it without taking it off!”
“When you put on heels, you feel like a gorgeous woman, when you take them off, you feel like a happy person.”
“A real woman doesn’t need much. A real woman needs everything!”
“And I am happy by default. And I don’t intend to change the settings!”
“How to make a woman happy? Good question... And if you're looking for an answer, look for it in your woman. She will tell you everything herself. No, of course, she won't talk about it as frankly as you would like... Just listen to her, listen very carefully. Everything she says, everything she wanted to say but didn't say, everything she could have said but didn't want to...
There is no instruction for women's happiness, and if there were, then each woman would have her own. And what makes one happy may not be in another at all. There are also ingredients that are the basis of all formulations, but they have long been found. These are the answers that lie on the surface, and your task is to recognize deep desires. It is so important for her that you understand, that you hear between the words, read between the lines about what it is ... HER happiness.
What difference does it make what they think of you? If you are happy with the decisions you have made, then you have made the right choice, no matter what others say. Imagine how much effort you spend trying to read other people's minds, and still do not guess.
Listen to advice - please, but do not let others decide how you live.
2. Anger and resentment
The next time you catch yourself feeling this way, think about this: “Would I like to be the person I envy?” Certainly not, you love yourself (even if somewhere very deep inside).
You are looking at someone else's life that you do not know. You have no idea what this person is thinking. Maybe when he dives into the pool of his private house, he hates himself or is wildly afraid of something? Maybe you, walking through the forest on a sunny day, experience much more pleasure than he does, basking on the snow-white sand in the Maldives?
Stop looking at others. If you feel good now, then everything is right. If not, make it good.
16. Uncertainty
Happy people tend to have self-esteem (just don't confuse it with an inflated ego). They are pleased with themselves and exude confidence.
There is no reason to doubt yourself. If you have traits that you hate, there are two ways: accept them or change them. In every person there is everything at once: a libertine, and a puritan, and a lying bastard, and a gentleman. You choose who you will be.
17. Dependence on others
No one will fill the void within you. No one will make you positive and self-sufficient if you are unhappy with your fate. To share your happiness with someone else, you must first become happy yourself. So do not even hope that your success is in the wrong hands. Only in yours.
18. Past
Living in the past means burying your present. There were mistakes - okay, who didn't? Arrange a magnificent funeral for your memories, remember only the lessons and.
19. Total control
Sometimes you just need to relax and let life take its course. You can't control everything and you have to deal with it. Otherwise, you will be constantly nervous, but in the end you still won’t change anything. There are just things that are out of your control. They must be accepted as they are.
20. Expectations
People think that others should live up to their expectations. That's bullshit. Nobody owes you anything, and you don't owe anything either. No one should be polite, attentive, accurate, honest, pleasant in communication, clean, after all. Nothing should be perfect, amazing, unforgettable, but it can be. If it does, great, if not, don't worry. Be ready to accept everything that life sends you, and you will find happiness.
This book is written for those who want to grow up happy and help everyone become happy.
So it's for you too. I am sure: you, my friend, dream that you and other people have a very good life. Is it true? Who doesn't want this?
I heard a lot of different disputes about happiness. Some said: "Strength, health - they are all happiness." Others disagreed: “To live richly, to have everything - that’s what happiness is!” Still others argued: “Happiness is glory: so that everyone knows you!” “Knowing your business well in life means being happy,” many argued. And others added: “The main thing for happiness is a clear conscience, so that people would not be ashamed to look in the eyes.”
And I have heard quite a few other discussions about happiness.
I only did not hear anyone say: “I do not want happiness. I don't want a good life! I want to be unhappy."
I have not met such eccentrics.
All people want to be happy.
But how to understand happiness? What is it?
Here is a letter in front of me that came from Belarus. Written by a student. His name is Vitaly Kolyadich.
“I ask for your advice on what to do to become very happy, and how to figure out who is happy and who is not.” Yes, it is not easy to answer such a letter at once! Here, some said, happiness is wealth, money. Of course, the rich have always fared better than the poor. But real happiness, such as true friendship, cannot be bought for money. If, say, a person knows that he got money dishonestly, cheated someone, took it from others, and people around live poorly and they curse him, then no matter how rich the person is, he is a little uneasy. Conscience sharpens. And no amount of money can pay off your conscience.
Of course, it is very important to be healthy, strong, to cope with any business. But what to do if a person cannot find a job for himself, they do not give him work for his strong, skillful hands? But this is what happens to millions of people in America, in all capitalist countries. So, happiness is not in the same force!
Those who believe that all happiness is in glory are also mistaken; as if happy is the one whom everyone knows. Glory to glory discord. Good fame really pleases a person. And he does not know how to get rid of bad fame ... The fame of a person’s bad deeds trails behind him everywhere on his heels, shames him, reproaches him. What joy is there? No, it means that not all glory is happiness. A person needs to live, work and treat people in such a way as to honestly deserve real glory.
There are also those who believe in random, blind happiness, which goes indiscriminately to those who, as they say, are simply lucky in life. But this is unfaithful, short and fragile happiness. Today a person accidentally succeeded in something, but if he blindly came across luck, tomorrow happiness can change him ...
Yes, we do not agree with you on every happiness. Dishonest, greedy, blind, unscrupulous, lonely happiness is not good for us. Well, for example, how can you be truly happy if everyone around you is unhappy? If you, because of laziness, fear or greed, did not do in life what you should have done? ..
We are for happiness with honor!
In our opinion, happy is the one who makes happiness not only for himself, but for everyone. Who loves people and whom they respect and love. Who feels that he has enough strength, knowledge and skills to make life better together with all people. One who knows and loves his job rejoices in life, boldly thinks about tomorrow, is not afraid of difficulties, feels like a needed person among other people and gives them all his strength. After all, happiness is not only to have, to take, to receive. Don't you, for example, rejoice when you can give something to your father and mother, to a comrade or girlfriend, to somehow help them? This means that happiness lies in giving, helping others, sharing joy with them. He is the only truly happy person who can tell people: "My happiness is a part of our great common happiness."
But has there ever been a completely happy life on earth?
And could she even be?
Let's talk about all this!
This book talks about how people have been looking for the way to happiness for thousands of years. How did they finally understand what prevents them from being happy. How dare they make life quite good. And what it will be, this very good life.
In order to look into the future and see this very close, very good life, you need to know what happened to people in the old days, what is happening in our days. Let's go ahead and take a look at everything.
QUESTION: Everyone desperately strives for happiness, but for many of us it is unattainable. Why are so many people dissatisfied with life? Maybe the reason for this is our era or our high expectations?
ANSWER: It's not as bad as it seems. There are many people who consider their lives wonderful; they live a full-blooded life and love every minute of it. But they don't say much about it; as a rule, they do not write articles and do not consult psychoanalysts. And yet your question is legitimate: yes, people who enjoy their lives are in the minority. Why? Because many have not yet mastered the art of a happy life.
QUESTION: Art? So you think that happiness is something that can be learned? I tend to think that one day you can not decide - I will be happy! Happiness is either there or it isn't. You can do a lot, but I do not understand how you can make happiness?
ANSWER: Your point of view is part of the problem that many face in their pursuit of happiness. These people believe that there is something that can bring them happiness, one has only to take possession of it, and do not understand that they themselves must make their own happiness. Some of the strength is knocked out by studying French, physics or scuba diving. They have the patience to learn how to drive a car, but they do not want to spend time learning the science of driving themselves.
QUESTION: It turns out that we should, as it were, stand at the remote control and manage our own lives. Shouldn't the art of living be more natural?
ANSWER: Alas, but for the majority it is not natural! After all, we are not born with the knowledge of the secret of a happy life, and many of us will never know it. To know this secret, you need to learn a lot.
QUESTION: Where do you start?
ANSWER: The first thing to do is to realize that we are probably looking in the wrong place. The source of happiness is not outside, but within us. Most of us do not use our full potential and live as if on a reduced power. And so it will continue as long as we are looking for someone who would provide us with the magic key to happiness. We must understand: we already have this magic key. We seem to be waiting for someone's permission to start living fully, although for everything that happens to us in life we are accountable only to ourselves and are responsible for the quality of our life.
QUESTION: If it's all up to us, if we can flip the magic switch and "turn on" happiness - why shouldn't everyone just do it?
ANSWER: There is no magic switch! But there is a certain life position. Taking responsibility for your life means fundamentally changing your approach to everything around you. Many do their best to avoid this change and responsibility. They are much more willing to put the blame for their problems on someone or something external than to take action to improve the situation. We even talk about our feelings as if they were space aliens. We say, "This feeling has taken possession of me," as if we are only helpless toys in the hands of mysterious forces. Listen to us, so it turns out that our feelings change like the weather, over which we have no control. Such a "meteorological" approach to emotions relieves us of responsibility for our mental well-being and reduces the possibility of independent choice.
QUESTION: And I believe that our feelings are really mysterious, and in most cases their causes remain unknown to us. If I am angry or upset, I can order myself not to break the dishes or, for example, not burst into tears, but I cannot take and order myself to change my mood. I'm not even sure if I want to do it. After all, if something offended me, I have the right to feel offended.
ANSWER: Absolutely! You are entitled to emotions. To feel everything that you can feel is truly human. But all too often people cling to unpleasant feelings, even "groom" them. And, without fully realizing the consequences of these actions, they actually cause these emotions in themselves. They do things that make them feel bad and then say, "I couldn't help it." In reality, this phrase hides another, more true: "I did not try to do anything about it."
Newman Mildred, Berkowitz Bernard
"How to make friends with yourself?"
Lifestyle 5393 2 10.08.2016, 15:25
The director of the Tyumen publishing house "Russian Week", philosopher and writer Miroslav Bakulin is one of those people for whom, it seems, there are no boundaries of perception at all. In the perestroika years, he was one of the members of the Tyumen rock club, in the 90s, together with Vladimir Bogomyakov, he hosted the Eternal Call show on the Dipol-Patrol radio. Today, he publishes religious and fiction literature and conducts theological lectures, in which he interprets the Gospel, meticulously deciphering the cultural, linguistic and historical codes that are hidden in ancient texts. This year Bakulin released his new novel "Pyotr Ivanovich". Georgy Elaev talked with the writer about why punks become priests, why old people grumble and how to mess around properly.
What Miroslav Bakulin said:
What all people want.
A wave of world idiocy and youth degradation.
What to read to understand the history of human thought.
About the times of Tyumen punk and why you need to constantly develop.
Miroslav Yurievich, we recently met at the defense of projects by students of the Department of Publishing. I well remember how harshly you criticized them. Why are you so strict with them?
They then come to me for practice, how is it without rigor? Within a month, students bring the book from the manuscript to printing, go through all the cycles of editorial work, work on sheet selection, take the books to the printing house and glue them together so that they can see how it is done. In twenty-four days of practice they should become professionals.
But they are children, a little hothouse.
What does "children" mean? What children? Listen, Arkady Gaidar already shot people at the age of fifteen and was considered a fully grown man. Adults come, forgive me, aunts who can give birth to children, uncles who can have a family. What kind of children are they? When does childhood end?
It seems to me that now it is good if childhood ends at twenty-five.
Well, then we need to attribute most of the country to children, for whom there is no demand at all. Drink, have fun, hang out, relax, do nothing. It's probably good, but I don't know if it's good for the country.
Actually, why am I all this - after all, students still have a special attitude to work, reverent. And you demand calloused hands from them.
I got married in my third year, by the end of the university I already had a son. I worked as a watchman, studied as a day student and at the same time did a lot of things: I painted, I wrote, I made a living. Since then, I have gotten used to living on my own. I have always hated stupidity and unwillingness to do anything when a person has no interests at all. And now this syndrome is ubiquitous. A wave of world idiocy that has swept over us: no interests, no authority, no knowledge. The main problem in universities is that a modern teacher cannot explain his subject to students; he is simply not understood. They don't understand a damn thing, not a single word.
“People don’t want to spend money on each other. This is the ability to spend money and receive gifts. Previously, the main entertainment for Russian people was to go out and beat someone. Nice job!"
My colleagues from the departments of political science, philosophy, culturologists come to me and say: “They don’t understand us!” Students come home from school so relaxed that they waste their time at the university. They don't know languages, they don't know technology. They don't even know how to communicate with a computer. And where do they go then? They also need to be employed. At the same time, as Morrissey sang, “but people keep the brain between the legs”, they get pregnant, give birth, have abortions. Why can't we take it responsibly?
In Israel, I was surprised to learn that women earn money among the Hasidim - mostly on the Internet, having 8-9 children each. How to treat it? For example, you are brought up in a family: what do your parents want from you? So that you leave the family as a decent person. Likewise, university professors want something to grow out of students. A real teacher reads to one student, the smartest and most talented in the classroom. And if you say that at twenty-five you are still a child, I don't understand it, I'm very old.
And when did you realize that you had grown up?
I think that at the moment when he took his first son in his arms. He is now twenty-nine years old. That's when I became an absolutely adult, although before that there was a responsible guy. I don't know if I should get married early and have kids. Maybe it's not fashionable?
So is it the problem with the kids or the parents?
The problem is the parents! Now barter relations - here's a gadget for you, just leave me alone. I paid for you - study for yourself. And you don’t want to talk, live with a person, spend money on him. Many teachers do the same: they do not want to spend money on their students. And they will say high words - before the Motherland they are responsible for the younger generation! And they must improve every day so as not to be boring, reading the same thing year after year.
Just imagine - there is nothing worse than the teaching profession. Okay, if you spent time at the university from start to finish, and when you go around for twenty years in a row and tell students the same thing: what kind of woodpecker do you have to be to choose such a profession?! I once went into the classroom of a colleague in philosophy and I see how he sleeps on the first desk, and next to him stands a student with an ugly Soviet-era textbook and reads aloud. This is now called a "lecture". Nonsense unbearable!
The problem is that people have stopped talking. And they are already gentle creatures, used to being offended by everything and eager to understand nothing. Therefore, the point is not only that some kind of temporal wave of idiocy has swept over us, but that there are no goals. I watch how the youth is degrading - this, of course, is the grumbling of the old man, but still - I see that it is degrading, even when it is bright and clean. Simply because there are no priorities. A young man, a student, lives with a girl. They both use contraceptives - he uses condoms, and she uses oral contraceptives. That is, they insure twice, not trusting each other, but at the same time they live like husband and wife. She tells him: "You will not marry me until I graduate from the university." He, being a believer, due to the fact that they live in fornication, cannot take communion in the church. He excommunicated himself, living with this girl, and she tells him: “I will not be baptized until you marry me, and I will not go to church with you.” What kind of baptism can we talk about, she does not believe in God! Why live with this?
This is the state that the Lord spoke about: “You can blaspheme me as much as you like, but one sin will not be forgiven you either here or there - the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit”, this is when a person is not able to understand, “what is he doing wrong?”.
And how to understand it?
John Chrysostom said: “To what shall I liken a sinner? I will liken a sinner to a hungry dog that licks a saw, tearing its tongue, goes crazy from the smell of blood and continues to lick the saw.” This is the fourth century, 1600 years ago. When a person sits with his ass on a stake, sorry, and does not even understand what is happening. And there is no sincere person nearby who would say: “What are you doing?”.
“The Lord gives us people, meetings, fantastic books, amazing women - everything is amazing in general, and how we use it depends on our freedom. The problem is that people don't know how to use it."
All people are the same by nature - everyone wants to be happy. Why are not you happy? Once I met my teacher colleague and said to him: “Hello, I hope you are doing well?”. He fired his two lasers at me and replied: "Only idiots are fine." “Well, I guess I'm an idiot,” I tell him. “But you, professor, teach philosophy, you have read and written so many books, why are you unhappy?” What's the point of being a professor and not being happy?
As for that story about students, I won’t speak for the majority, but sometimes I feel squeezed in a vise when everyone around you is told that you must be successful, achieve something ...
To whom should?
That's the point, to whom? For yourself, perhaps, but definitely not for the country, after all - it is not fashionable to work for the sake of the country now. Must lose weight, earn more money, accumulate things - some kind of endless frustration.
Well, it's pointless. And this senselessness was shown one and a half thousand years ago. Blessed Augustine had a theory of predestination, which William Blake later formulated in verse:
Who is born
Only for sorrow and troubles,
Who is born for eternity
Only for joy carefree.
Who for carefree joy,
Who is for death endless.
That is, as if the Lord predestined life for everyone. You are destined to be born a thief - steal. Destined to be born as a boss - boss, fearing no one. Now in the West this theory dominates very strongly: you need to live on campus with a girl of a certain circle. He became a graduate student - he must leave the campus, rent an apartment and change the girl. You must have a certain brand of car, clothes, and so on. Became a teacher - again you change the social game. This is a career, and you can see that if you are successful, then God loves you too. And if “yes, I’m a loser, so why don’t you kill me”, as Beck sings in a famous song… Loser is the last person.
We now have about the same, only God is not in this picture.
When I was asked as a child what I wanted to be, I said that I wanted to be an old man. And I've always liked crazy people, I've always liked people who got out of the system and spit on other people's points of view. And even now, if a young man got on the road someone older, who would spend some time on his soul, that would be good. I was lucky in my youth to meet such people on the way, very lucky - and all my life. Because all these theories are nonsense! The Lord gives us people, meetings, fantastic books, amazing women - everything is amazing in general, and how we use it depends on our freedom. The problem is that people don't know how to use it! But it's okay - life still lasts beyond twenty-five years, so everyone has a chance to open up. It's interesting!
I’ll ask the stupidest question now, but how to “open up” and avoid this pit of misunderstanding?
Read a lot, think a lot, don't waste time rewinding serials, but take up self-education. Start from the 4th century BC - Plato, Antisthenes, Anaxagoras, Socrates. Then move on to the Neoplatonists, then move on to the foundations of Christian culture, and therefore move on to the Middle Ages. At least give yourself an idea of what has been happening on Earth for more than two thousand years. The brains creak at first, but then they start to work, you get a taste, new words, you master languages.
Why should we start with this?
Because this is the history of human thought, and if you have not read the Socratic writings of Xenophon of Athens, then in general everything is complicated. People then also thought with their heads. Everything was already there, just more concise, but deep.
Now people are defending dissertations on the philosophy of slippers, the philosophy of nails, about commas in Sholokhov's novel. Because all these gadgets and so on do not make a person smarter, they make him lazier: he opened Wikipedia and read it, people wrote it. And people could make a mistake, take the original text and read it - no, it should be concise, brief. "Anna Karenina" in twenty pages with comics. Everything is tiny, small, just not to bother.
Now the thoughts of the young are freer, cleaner from all sorts of troubles. There were two fraer at the crossroads, one says to the other: "Let's send a champagne with you and we'll pick up the girls for a buzz." The second one stood for a moment, was silent and gave out: “What's the point? Let's go out with vodka."
Good ones!
Well, like that, they stood thoughtfully and went to extinguish, because the girls - you need champagne, songs, breed them somehow ... Two sides of the same coin.
So maybe it's natural?
In general, I was in awe of these people, of the level at which they mentally support themselves. Then you can not bother with life at all - for poetry, for love, for relationships with children. I know one person who never took his son fishing, picking mushrooms, and never even walked around the city by the hand with him. A worthy man, professor. And the son lives simply: after university, he stocks up with alcohol to the eyeballs and, like Mitek (Mitki is a group of Russian artists who led a rather drunken lifestyle. - Approx. ed.), Every day he comes home. Nobody bothers him, because his father does not even greet him. So you can generally pass by life. People don't want to spend money on each other. This is the ability to spend money and receive gifts. Previously, the main entertainment for Russian people was to go out and beat someone. Nice business!
Is that also a gift?
Certainly! Especially when the wall is against the wall, everyone stands in such a way that they protect each other and beat each other to the fullest. It was fun! I do not want to say that everything is downright sad now, you can always find a pair of intelligent eyes in the audience, but this is becoming a rarity. In the 90s, I had a cursed auditorium at the Construction Academy, in which there were a lot of drug addicts. The girls snorted cocaine from powder boxes, and the guys spread heroin. Few of them survived. But they came to lectures! I told them: “Why?! On Saturday, at eight o'clock in the morning, why did you come to the dead in ... what for? And then they were found in room 312, they were lying there with an overdose.
Since we started to remember, you caught all this movement of the Tyumen punk. Now tell me, is this basically impossible now?
Why? Quite possible. Then the times were more severe, we, dancing the twist and rock and roll, were filmed from the windowsills. The cops came, screwed, called to the KGB, to the Komsomol, but no one was afraid. Life was interesting. I think that even now all this is there - you can find any drums, any keys and strings. It used to be that bongs were made from sewer pipes to play on the street, but this is from the poor. Previously, there was no "better", before there were many more stupid and limited people who read little. We called them gopniks, and for them the main pleasure was to beat their faces. But nevertheless - a book appeared, say, about Zen Buddhism, and everyone from our circle quickly swallowed it. And no one considered it shameful to spend the night reading. Now there are still such maniacs who enter the Phalanster and their hands begin to tremble nervously, but I have met few of them.
And how did this whole punk thing affect people?
Before that, they had no chance to change. And the communication itself gave them the opportunity to become different, so everyone held on to each other. A person perceived others as an opportunity to grow himself. I liked dissent, I liked that a person has a different point of view. Now one person listens to another and thinks what would be the fastest answer? He doesn't listen, he thinks what to say. And he doesn't have time! In the past, people were just going to be quiet. Gathered, sat and dispersed - well silent.
“Okay, if you spent time at the university from start to finish, and when you go around and tell students the same thing for twenty years in a row: what kind of woodpecker do you have to be to choose such a profession ?!”
I know that many boys and girls from my generation learned English, French and other languages just for the love of rock music. They listened to Pink Floyd, it was necessary to translate what they howl there. We sat down with dictionaries and translated. Many then left, by the way.
And how did you meet Miroslav Nemirov?
At the philological faculty, he studied in the fifth year, I - in the first. We met: "What's your name?" - "Miroslav" - "Come on, you're driving!" - "What is your name?" - "Miroslav" - "Yes, you are persecuting!". There were only two Miroslavs in the city and both turned out to be students of the same faculty. "Let's get drunk!" - but I basically didn’t drink, and I say: “I don’t drink.” And he was barefoot, his pants were tied up with a cord from a tape recorder ... He was a cheerful guy. These are the personalities attracted to each other from the gray Komsomol life.
And what attracted you?
And I didn’t have to be involved, Igor Zhevtun sat at the desk with me at school, who later played in Civil Defense. We were friends with Vova Bogomyakov and the late Yura Shapovalov. It was a circle of people where you didn’t have to find out who you were, you could just ask a question of life orientation: “Who are you listening to?”. There were Beatles fans, movie fans, people who listened to the Rolling Stones. We were friends with the girls from the art school, who then went to study in St. Petersburg. We visited them, went to concerts. In general, we held on to each other, labali together, traveled to each other, arranged sessions.
And did people really change?
Cardinally, because they allowed people with a different mental structure to fit into their spiritual structure. I began to communicate with artists and realized that I was an uneducated person: I don’t know Vrubel’s biography, I don’t distinguish Degas from Manet. And I forced myself to go to the regional library and sat there for half a year, reading books on the history of art.
How old were you?
Nineteen, twenty, maybe. I sat, rewrote everything by hand, until I figured it out. Then I began to study medieval art, I had a Ph.D. on medieval icon painting. Then he turned to philosophy. And what else if they told you: “Daddy, you don’t know Vrubel? You are a fool, aren't you? Or a gopnik?
Well, not to say that it was different now - people meet in the same way, arrange something together.
Now there are no problems at all, but there is no flight, or something. I ask old rockers: “Who are you listening to now?” And they both listened to Porcupine Tree and listen.
It's probably harder for musicians to be creative these days.
So where is the music? As if it ended in the 80s, where did it go?
It hasn't gone anywhere, good music is more than enough now.
My youth supplies me with gigabytes of this music, I listen to it, but something doesn’t work at all. Oldies like Nick Cave and Morrissey can give such a child that mom don't cry, and they compose lyrics as if they were still eighteen. To listen to decent music, you need to have a good education, to know who Handel is, how a quintet differs from a quartet. And this is not!
Don't you think that today's 20-year-olds at your age will talk about the same thing, only about modern music?
Of course they will! It is the law of nature, grumbling is a genre that is associated with disappointment. Because any person hopes that much smarter people will come after him, that there will be even more beautiful music. Over the years, this hope fades, realism comes. So in twenty years they will grumble, but it will be a qualitatively different grumbling. We're better groaning now.
Let's talk about your books now. When I read The Teeth of Sinners, it seemed to me that it was generally universal, I even gave it to my mother.
Well, it is sugary and molasses, it took a long time to write.
But when I read the novel "Pyotr Ivanovich", I felt something Mamlei in it.
Mamleev?! Holy-holy-holy! It was a literary experiment, on which I finished my exercises and will not do it again. I had a difficult situation in my life: my daughter was sick, she was dying and died in the end. For three years I practically lived in a cancer ward and was engaged in filling in my gaps in knowledge about the European XIII century. It was a fantastic time when the religious outlook was overwhelming and the shoemakers in the market fought in religious debates. I did not want to sleep at night, I could afford to read more than think. Therefore, "Pyotr Ivanovich" should not evoke feelings of harmony in anyone. In "Teeth of Sinners" there is the feeling of a young man who has gained some "precious pearls" that the Lord spoke of. And here a person stands on the threshold of maturity and thinks about other things. Who knows, maybe this experiment failed.
A person has many shades if he respectfully knows how to treat someone else's thoughts, even with servility, because it was servility that gave birth to geniuses. The ability to look another person in the mouth is the basis of genius. Not some super data that you can use. Bosch looked with delight at Erasmus of Rotterdam, Brueghel looked with delight at Bosch, Salvador Dali looked with endless adoration at both Bosch and Brueghel.
But where does it come from?
From the ability to admire, enjoy another person. The fact that such a kayfovo person lives next to you.
If you try to imagine that there is such a pyramid of admiration, where is its top?
Yes, there is a cornerstone, a source - the Lord Jesus Christ with his wonderful sense of humor and wonderful jokes in the Gospel, where - surprisingly - God became incarnate and became a man. To do this, one had to have a great sense of humor; And He knew how it would all end.
“I have always hated stupidity and unwillingness to do anything when a person has no interests at all. And now this syndrome is everywhere, a wave of world idiocy that has swept over us: no interests, authorities and knowledge.”
It was only in my old age that I began to study the Gospel, comparing the Aramaic and Greek interlinear, so that I could interpret. You also need to grow up to this, and a person grows - from fall to fall. The more you hurt your face, the better.
Well, listen, what did we talk about at the beginning and what have we come to now? So anyway...
Is there a chance for today's young people to find something? If they try to search, they will find. They asked Miroslav Maratovich Nemirov: “Why, in their youth, was everyone punks with green mohawks, and now everyone is in the church?” And he replied: “We were looking for strength. We wanted to find such power, and we found it - God. Who is cooler than him? Imagine an arch - the load in it on all the bricks is distributed evenly due to the fact that there is a triangular stone in the middle. That's what it is!
The ascetics of antiquity differed from modern Christians in determination. You need to make up your mind and force yourself to go to the library, read, albeit on Wikipedia, but four biographies of Mozart in order to understand how it was possible to write so much in such a short life. Despite the fact that he had ugly ears, which he was embarrassed about. Beethoven did not hear - he took one edge of the cord in his teeth, and the second - in the piano and, by the vibration of the skull, tried to listen to the music he was playing. There would be determination, but for it you need a visual goal, and for it you need to push a person.
Therefore, there can be no kindergarten in higher education. What source of information will you have, what knowledge will you receive, will you be able to actually apply them - so you studied chemistry at school, can you cook soap? No. Did you pass physics? Let's fix the electricity. Knowledge and experience are separated today.
What prompted you to create Russian Week?
I had a choice: go to the bank or to the monastery. For me, the choice was obvious, so for almost ten years I worked alone at the Siberian Orthodox Newspaper. I bought the paper myself, I made it myself, I wrote it myself, I photographed it myself. And then I decided to drop out of high school, because I never liked teaching, but for me it was obedience. He traveled a lot, met everyone he wanted to: with musicians, artists, writers. I looked at how free they were and realized how unfree I am. They did what they liked and did it well. You just had to say to yourself: “Who came up with the idea that this system around should swallow us up?”. We don't owe anyone anything. It is much more free to work for yourself, for other people and for an idea, if any.
In general, “Russian Week” is from the word “do not do”, that is, Russian idleness. On Sunday, it was impossible to work at all earlier. As Venichka Erofeev said: "This is the hard and vain work of a Russian loafer." He is left to himself, he reads books himself, he is engaged in creativity, he goes somewhere and is his own strictest judge and opponent.
Have you ever had such moments when you come home and do not want anything, because everything is decay and will inevitably turn to dust?
It happened when I was young, and even more radically: I went into the kitchen, and not only to live - I didn’t want to breathe. I was still a student then, stood behind the refrigerator, hid from the small icon of Christ, the first one I bought. And now He smiles at me, blesses me. I tell Him: “I don’t want to pray to You today, I won’t talk to You. Everything that I hoped for, all plans in life - everything collapsed, everything is vanity and decay. He looks at me and smiles. And suddenly I have, like Japanese satori, when a person suddenly sees through the mind all at once. And I realized that my life was invented not by me, not by my parents, not by my friends, but by Him. And He conceived it as a very cool adventure - you just need to move it, and not whine at every corner that everything is bad. Each of our words and deeds is like a pebble thrown into the water, where endless circles diverge, which no one knows where and how they will respond.
Text: Georgy Elaev
A photo: Sergei Drachev
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10.08.2016, 11:12
