August 4, 2009
No, friends, Work and Travel is not just about money. Not just about impressions. Not just about the English language. First and foremost, it is immense food for thought. For reflection.
Living here in New York, I realized things I could never have understood back home. Now I know that my home, a one-room apartment in the Moscow region, is paradise. Now I know that for true happiness, a person might only need a bed, a shower, and three meals a day. In Russia, everyone I talk to strives to become a manager, an economist, an IT specialist, and so on. But now I understand that to be happy, it is enough to simply have a job. Any job that brings you at least some stable income.
Happiness is when you know what awaits you tomorrow. Even if it is just a cup of tea with a sandwich in the morning, something for lunch and dinner, and sleep in a bed. But it will definitely be there.
But not everyone has even that. Some will have to pay for a new apartment for an extra year due to the ruble exchange rate drop. And some do not know what they will eat or where they will sleep tomorrow. Some will sleep in a cold subway until they are taken to a pigsty. Others on the street. On a bench damp from the rain, covered with bags and some clothes.
Not everyone understands this. But that is how it should be: how can you understand what it is like to sleep on the street if you have spent your whole life waking up in a warm bed, making yourself breakfast, and knowing that today you will sleep at home again?
We are people, we are all different, but we must help each other. And the most painful thing for me is that we, Russians, do not know how to do this at all. During my trip, I met so many people of different nationalities, heard so many different stories, and saw a lot with my own eyes. And, friends, almost any other nation sticks together much more than we, Russians, do.
Kazakhs, Uzbeks, and Tajiks work here like ants, sending all their money home, leaving only enough for food for themselves. Jews? They are the most united people in the world.
<< Paragraph removed at the request of the administration >> In this regard, we are as far from them as the Sun is from the Earth. We. No, not we. For us, everyone is on their own. Everyone is alone. And from these units, a collection of people called Russians is formed. Nothing binds us except the language and the nationality in our passports.
I am not ashamed, as some are, of being Russian. And I never will be. In a famous movie, they said, 'Where is your homeland? They sold your homeland to the Americans to party in style.' And, like it or not, it is true. Everyone makes mistakes, you have to move on. And live your own life. We should not, Dmitry Anatolyevich, turn Russia into a second America. Because it will not work anyway—we do not have a printing press. And the mentality is not the same. We just need to become a little friendlier.
