Бесплатный фрагмент - One story of millions of people

INTRODUCTION

The book was written in three cities – Espoo (Finland), Moscow (Russia) and Sochi (Russia). On every page you’ll find answers to questions that Google can’t find because Google can’t feel and empathize the way you can. The book is about the life of the main character and his feelings which always showed him in different ways. Once he flew to America at a very young age, and upon returning back to Russia he settled in a small room which for many years was the personification of his whole life. He will wander in search of himself, love and his own destiny until he meets a woman near one of the pedestrian underpasses of the capital. The book will immerse you into the states that the main character had been experiencing for eight years. It is these states that will help you live a wide number of feelings that will resonate throughout all thirteen chapters. It will seem to you that the chapters are not connected to each other but closer to the middle of the book you will be able to feel not only what the author wrote about but also supplement the events in each chapter with your own feelings.

One story of millions of people is the story of every person living on this planet. We all experience those things the character of this book lives through. All the events described in this book have a real story, in simple words – the book was based on real events. Every word will be confirmed by your feelings.

CHAPTER 1

“The world is not perfect, look at what country you live in”, – I heard in the morning waking up after a long sleep. A day earlier I returned late at night, or rather early in the morning today when the time was about five a.m. After such long trips to the bar I always woke up the next day with a terrible feeling of guilt which was mixed with resentment. This resentment had been dragging with me for a long time and had already become an ordinary part of my tiny little world. At that time there was no whole world inside me, it ceased to exist from the very moment I began to stifle it with all my feelings which I had been dragging myself down with for so long – to the very bottom. The bottom that I invented for myself – with insults, fears, anger, dislike, debts, pain, guilt, envy and hatred. It was as if I was walking in a circle and did not know how to get out of it, did not want to admit to myself that I had brought myself into this. Unconsciously leaving myself in this state and prolonging it in order to re-experience all these feelings that devastated me. In that little room I was constantly looking for life and confirmation that I was alive, thereby again and again creating resistance. Everything could have been different – in ease and calmness, but no – each of these states was strange to me. Then I did not want to accept myself as weak and appear as such fearing that I would not be accepted like that. That is why I tried to be strong, I seemed strong even when I sat exhausted on the bed, convincing myself that I would sit for a while and get up vigorous, not weak but ready to move mountains.

Having looked around, without feeling my awakened body, pretty frantically I found my slippers of different sizes under my feet, as always not understanding at once which the right or the left one was. I shoved my feet into them and felt that again I could not get a lungful of fresh air. The feeling that I did not have enough oxygen visited me every morning. Sometimes I woke up even at night in some kind of fear, opened all the windows in the room and, lying down again, hugged her in bed in order to reduce my anxiety which, like resentment, appeared in me already at the usual level of my consciousness. If earlier I had felt anxiety before going on stage or before meetings with the leaders of companies that had been significant for me at that time, now I felt it in moments when I was just lying and staring at the ceiling which I had studied up and down over the past year.

Breathless again, I continued to sit silently on the bed for about ten more minutes, scrolling through social media one after another and looking through the lives of other people. Each user’s story provoked conflicting feelings inside me – envy, disbelief, disapproval, denial. Many of them were photographed happy on vacation or in their own car listening to music, some of them posted the process of developing their own business, and someone just recently received photos from their own wedding. All these pictures disarmed me, made me somehow undisguised, there was a feeling that all these people seemed to know how things were going with me and seemed to see right through me in response when I looked at their happy faces. They didn’t even seem to know I existed, but they annoyed me more than even my relationship with people I knew or with her. My thoughts always hit a dead end as soon as I thought about her for a moment. Only the feelings could not be hidden, in these feelings I found less contradictions, but there was more guilt in them – as if I could not just love her, as if this feeling was not allowed to me by someone and this made my soul even more painful. As if at that moment someone inside me turned up the volume on the receiver of feelings which had been playing on my nerve endings like on strings for a very long time.

I knew then that somewhere in the kitchen she was preparing breakfast which in the East would have been considered second lunch. She always got up before me, every morning was always special for her – a workout, a meditation, jogging in the park, alternating shower and reading books. Having thought about what she was reading now I began to glance through the shelf with books that stood exactly one after the other. At that moment I remembered that I had also wanted to read them for long but somehow didn’t get around to it. “I’ll start today …” – I thought, – “… with Napoleon Hill’s book ‘Think and Grow Rich’, this book had fallen into my hands three times but I never bothered to read it.” In an instant I felt the aroma of the morning breakfast permeating the room. Pausing on the thought that I would soon be called for breakfast, I looked through my swollen face at the clock in order to somehow get oriented in time and understand how much I overslept today.

The clock said nine minutes to one. All over again I felt the feeling of guilt intensifying in me, and thoughts started running at an incredible speed, as if the inner fear monger woke up a little later than me and it was his entrance now. He always woke up in me when there was the question how to drown out the conflicting feelings in me that I felt when I looked at the clock at the moment of awakening. I didn’t particularly like the clock that stood in the room, it was old, dilapidated, there was an even sadder atmosphere around it – there was neither beauty nor aesthetics in it. The wood from which the surface of this clock was assembled gave off not only the aroma of old lacquer, but also the history that sat deep inside this clock in its whole mechanism which was hidden behind the shell of the clock structure. Every time I looked at it, I got the feeling that so was I – some kind of old, dilapidated and, like the hands of the clock, I also walked in the same circle. As if all I had was a clock face that I filled with the most useless activities throughout the day, aging along with the clock. I definitely didn’t want to be old and dilapidated, and even more so to admit it. At that time my attention was always distracted, and even if someone had pointed out some beauty to me, I still would not have seen it living in fear that I would live my whole life walking like a hand on a white clock face.

In that small room I felt resistance more than ever. Four walls for me were full of fear which was often the reason for my escape from the room, although I ran away from her too, she seemed to know that no matter how many times I left, I would still return. And she was right – I was returning, having given myself a word before that I would not return. Yesterday was the same – I left without saying goodbye and returned when she was already sleeping on her side of the bed, as if in anticipation that on my return I would hug her again.

Continuing to sit silently on the bed I thought: “Maybe I am the very fear that I feel every day and just manifest it? Nonsense, what kind of thoughts are popping into my head!” – I silently exclaimed and turned towards the window, reacting to the strange sound of birds. Outside the window, I saw how the sun was coming out of a dark cloud and the rays were falling smoothly on the whole city warming the spring windy streets. A moment later I heard the familiar sound of a clock somewhere under my feet, which quickly returned me to my usual state. It sounded every day and even managed to annoy me a little during all the time that I spent sleepless at nights. After hearing the first three sounds I looked up at the dilapidated clock and realized that exactly nine minutes had passed since my awakening. I knew that this sound was made by the neighbors’ clock which struck one sharp once again treacherously reminding me of the clock face and the hands that were constantly moving in a circle. Nine minutes – I did not even notice how they flew by, however, at that time I did not notice my life either. Life was flying imperceptibly and at an incredible speed somewhere down – that was the point starting which I became even more afraid.

The sound of the neighbors’ clock had always reminded me of New Year, although even with such memories anyway I lived through those moments without my natural sense of joy. Although if you recollect childhood in which this feeling was there on New Year’s Eve along with children’s champagne, sweet gifts, felt-tip pens under the Christmas tree, parents’ emotions that were the most sincere when we unpacked the gifts, then you could plunge into this state for a moment. The state of a child who has the whole world for them. Occasionally at night lying on the bed I even fantasized that on the floor below in the same small but brighter space there was a clock that was a small copy of the Kremlin clock with the Spasskaya Tower. I’d always wondered who lived downstairs, what they did, and if they even came home because I’d never heard a single sound or a single voice. It was as if the clock stood alone by itself, mechanically beating out the eternal sound that had survived for several generations.

At that time, I was alone too, that’s how I felt but unlike the clock I had not survived a single generation yet. On the contrary, it seemed to me that everyone’s life was in full swing, regardless of age, and they were living every moment of their lives. While instead of living I was standing with my feelings, that were born in me in the process of escaping from myself, put together. Only six months later I would begin to realize what was going on with me at every moment of my life while I was in this small room and how I got into it searching for answers to my eternal questions which neither I nor the people I knew had answers to. To be more precise we no longer had the strength to somehow convince me because I always had my own truth. The truth which made me strong in the moment but created resistance to the whole outside world. Without realizing it I was destroying myself from the inside, fighting with something or rather with someone whom I had ceased to see in my own reflection a very long time ago.

Carefully getting up from the bed so as not to increase the pain in the lower back area, I made my way to wash myself. That lunchtime morning I knew that I would not again feel any joy from the contact of my body with water and even from her embrace. At that moment, I was not up to it – so many thoughts and memories were floating through my mind, although I was just going to wash, brush my teeth and take a shower. In an endless stream of thoughts, I sometimes did not understand at all how this was possible – I just woke up and seemed to be already tired of myself, of my thoughts and questions that began to run in my head as soon as I opened my eyes and released a huge portion of unaccepted feelings. Thoughts were rushing from ear to ear at such speed that I could not even stop for a moment to remember what was planned for me that day and what meeting I had on the calendar at seven thirty p.m. in one of the towers in Moscow City. Everything that I felt at that moment was unbearable for me, everything was choking me like the pain in the lower back which was drawing all my attention to itself.

A sharp pain made me immediately remember yesterday. In order to somehow distract myself from the flow of thoughts, noise, all the feelings that had been destroying me for a long time and continuous walking in a circle from which I did not see a way out – I had got drunk. In this state I had been somehow able to stop the speculating noise of my mind and relax a little. There is always a friend who will listen to you with your problems on the phone, and perhaps even come to be with you to share your pain. Even if he does not come, there is that friend who always comes, but either not always now. Yesterday was that very day when my friends did not come to me, already not the first evening. I felt that they were already tired of my stories and of the same phrases that “I will leave her”, that “I will launch my own line of business” and that “some kind of mess is always going on around”. The absence of my friends at a meeting with me reoccurred, each time it was more and more painful for me, the feeling of loneliness suppressed all my zeal and desire to move somewhere, it also increased my guilt even more. At that moment I understood that I was entrapped but despite my vivid imagination and fantasy I could not even imagine how to get out of this state. To make matters worse the loneliness within my soul was drawing the last bolt up tight on the manhole cover in my swampy well, where, having put myself on the bottom, I was hitting it with all parts of my body, in an attempt to get out of it. And this story had been repeating itself with me for several years now, when climbing the walls with my hands, I was wiping all the dirt – which was mixed with something wet and cold – from my face with my forearm.

At that moment I could hardly tell what it was. Either raindrops on my face or the sweat that came out of me with foolishness and disagreement with myself, or tears that I hadn’t seen in myself for a long time. To at least understand this, I had neither the strength nor the desire, but, despite all my inner resistance, I was trying. I was trying, as always, to explain everything with my mind, choosing rather strange words – they seemed to be not salty, and not even fresh drops on my face. In all this situation that was absurd for me, I knew for sure that I would not be able to tell by taste what it was because I did not even know the taste of a tear. Ever since my childhood I had been trying to be an adult and strong, thereby from an early age ceasing to be just a son and a boy who could also have feelings. Boys and men do not cry – this was a display of weakness, they told me as a child and I believed those who said this, blocking all the true qualities of a son and a man in myself. A man who, while still a boy, had the opportunity not to forget that he was a man, having learned to recognize in himself all his weaknesses, which in fact did not exist as soon as he recognized them in himself. After all, over the time this boy would recall himself and find out that all this time there had been neither strength nor weakness – he had always had the courage that allowed him to admit to himself and ask others for help.

At that time I could not even think about it, at that period living in a small room I thought about my weaknesses so often that there was not even a minute to recognize them in myself. Thoughts about them especially intensified in those moments when I was next to her. Vain attempts of the mind to explain once more the taste of these drops again only returned me to the state which I was mentally trying to get away from. Being in the space of four walls I knew for sure that these drops on my face had their own taste which became only a continuation of my feeling – a new feeling that I had not appeared to be before. It was about the same kind as all other feelings in the form of guilt, resentment, anger, hatred. But there was something about it that made it different from the others – it was definitely much stronger, taking me to a whole new level of sensing. This feeling intensified the pain, resentment, guilt, but most of all it intensified my fear which was living my life for me.

The feeling I appeared through at that moment which strengthened my whole state was bitterness. Bitterness when everyone is safe and sound, when everyone keeps saying that everything is fine, when there are so many events in life that a person could not even imagine as a child. And with all this they feel bitterness. Bitterness from the fact that somewhere inside a person is dying, a person who will physically live a long life but he will not be alive – with that look, smile and sense of humor, with that maximum return in his business and in communication with people, with that family in which everyone is happy and he is their reflection, with the zeal that he had in infancy and that twinkle in his eyes that ignited in other people faith in themselves, love and remembrance of himself, that self which he perhaps will never know about, just like what he is capable of and how good he is at it.

At such moments it’s not just a personality that dies, a personality which has long been associated with one’s name and thus separating a person from other people, it is not the body that dies, the body which was engaged in sports and physical labor the whole childhood, not even a social role dies – a son, a boyfriend, a friend, a partner, a student or a teacher, but a person who has ceased to live. Instead of living I began, like many others, to survive draining all my energy and giving all my will to those who can manage them better than myself.

Then I didn’t want to get out of this well, for some reason I had always wanted to show people something, to prove it, and so that they could see what I nailed. At those moments, I constantly recollected that I had received few medals in sports when I won prizes. As if by Murphy’s Law I was awarded only with diplomas but I wanted a medal. “They didn’t even give it to me at school when I graduated with two Bs, and after all I was supposed to be given a silver medal”, – I constantly thought with childish resentment typical of a human.

If you remember, in childhood we always liked to get excellent marks and did not like to get what was below this mark. We loved the certificate with honors, medals and diplomas more than ourselves and our loved ones. What is the most interesting, nothing has changed – the certificate is replaced with a diploma, the diploma is replaced with a contract, the contract is replaced with an agreement, the agreement is replaced with a position, the position is replaced with a business, the business is replaced with a life’s work, the life’s work is replaced with a purpose. There is no love, as there has never been, just eternal competition, struggle and rivalry. There is even a phrase that we say for that: “This is what the world is like, only the fast survive”. Aging a man revolves in an eternal circle, like clock hands around the dial. In the beginning, we were evaluated, then we learned to evaluate ourselves, and in order to somehow justify our aimless existence, we decided that we could evaluate others. And all that for the sake of another medal, that I’m good, but they are not, justifying our mistakes just not to admit them. This eternal pursuit somewhere is an escape from oneself – there is no love in this, there is no happiness in this, there is no self in this. A self who at any moment of time can remember who they really are and why they came into this world.

In a state of complete apathy and being out of any resources that year I really wanted to be noticed, but oddly enough no one was interested in my peculiar behavior, painfully familiar to many people – my fantasy had run out of new scenarios for my life I could come up with. Moreover, everyone had long got used to this and even began to say on the sidelines: “This is another game he has, which he has not played enough – we all know there is only one outcome, but we no longer want to be a part of this performance, we’ve even grown tired of being spectators, applauding while standing, we are leaving”. It’s the curtain time.

The orchestra died down, the conductor went out the door, and the actor, who had never realized that he himself was the creator and director of this theater, again plunged into pitch darkness.

In the bathroom I suddenly felt the irritation of the body lifting the handle of the faucet, which icy water flowed from, and I began to recover a little.

“How did I get here? Why can’t I remember the last three minutes, or five, or maybe more than ten, while I was shaving and brushing my teeth… Once again, I was in my thoughts which had taken me into some kind of heaviness about some conductors, a well and child’s medals. Get real!” – I thought to myself in a commanding tone. At that moment, my inner tension and irritability were troubling me, my whole state was felt in my movements and even in my voice. A couple of minutes later, finding out that, as always, I forgot my towel, I shouted to her in the kitchen so that she would bring it to me. Then I drew the curtain in the bathroom, continuing to wash off the shampoo with icy water. I saw how drops from the shower were slowly falling and touching my body, as if the time slowed down at that moment and even silence appeared in my mind, but literally in an instant there was a double knock on the door:

— Can I come to you? – she asked carefully as if she didn’t notice my tone in which I asked her.

— Yes, you can! – I answered drily and continued: – Close the door, please, I’m cold …

As the door gently shot, in a distant sweet voice on the other side of the door, I heard:

— Honey, I’m waiting for you for breakfast.

I perfectly understood that there was no request in my voice, it was more like some kind of demand in order to justify my forgetfulness and eternal dependence on another person in such “difficult” moments. I could not remember such “little things”, because I had to solve my “problems” that were spinning in my head from the moment I woke up from sleep.

Carefully leaving the bathroom with the wet floor so as not to injure my back, I said again in the same tone:

— It’s always unclear to me what kind of towel to lay on the floor for the feet!

— Yes, I threw everything into the washing machine to wash it, but I forgot to bring the clean one, sorry. Are you going to eat? – she asked and added smiling: – Everything is ready.

— Yes, I’m. You know that my back hurts … – I started to grumble again and waving my handsaid: – Okay, I’ll get dressed now and come back.

In the dressing room some clean ironed clothes were hung that she had had time to prepare while I had been sleeping. I put on my trousers, the belt I was looking for all over the room, a turtleneck and socks. After drying my head, I left the room and went to her in the kitchen to hug her tightly, again feeling guilty. She gently stroked my back and kissed me gently on the lips, with her gaze drawing my attention to the table. There were two cups of hot tea, clean plates for crepes and cottage-cheese pancakes, gravy boats for condensed milk and raspberry jam, and in the middle of the table there were two plates on which they all were in all their splendor. A few seconds later we sat down to have breakfast. Honestly, the breakfast was great, as, indeed, she was. I always looked at her and wondered how there could be so much beauty and tenderness in one girl: love, affection, fidelity and there was always something noble in her movements. She cooked breakfast every time with love and awe, but in my tiny world of “global” problems there was no place for this love. I was not thinking about the taste or about her sitting at the table, at that moment I was most afraid of one question that she asked me every day, and after which even more heaviness was always felt on my soul. This question was about my plans for the day and what I would do today besides my only meeting in the evening, which I did not even want to think about. I was afraid of this question only for the reason that I had nothing to do, my day was so uninteresting that it reflected all of me in my faceless state. And I understood that she knew about it but she believed in me more than I believed in myself. That is why she asked me to wake me up and give me another opportunity to remember my potential which had manifested itself in all its glory at our first meeting. But for some reason after a while, I forgot about it as well as about love for her and myself.

At that period, I was not up to realization, I was constantly coming across the news feed. Then I did not notice that I always lost the desire to do anything after reading the news that was published daily by the media. Reading the news, a person rarely wants to live after it – he slowly dies inside. The Moscow metro at that time had its own atmosphere, I always connected to the free wi-fi network and was automatically transferred to the page with the news, and in order to get out of it without getting stuck on the news about a murder or a new detention, I needed will. Will, which at first glance I did not have, as well as energy, thanks to which I could feel at least a little will, filling up with it from the inside. That year I chose to be weak-willed.

The dullness of Moscow and all this smog, which I had been warned about when moving, further deepened my inner state. The state that I had ever carried in myself, it made me stuffy inside, heavy and restless. Although over time I got used to living with this state of anxiety and ignoring it. It was a manifestation of me forever upset and having lost a sense of love for life, myself and others. In this state, through the prism of my little world, I could only grab onto what had never been mine and would never have become mine, but I wanted to somehow hold on to this “unfair” world. I perceived wealth only as the result of beyond effort, pain, disappointment in people, suffering in loneliness and betrayal by people close to me. I gave the go-by to all my opportunities that I had every day, I didn’t hear those who offered me options for solving the problems I invented, I didn’t feel the people close to me who were next to me and just saw right through me. They felt me even at those moments when I was sleeping, they knew that when I woke up in the morning I would have the same mood as the previous day, which, as it turned out at the end of the day, nothing depended on.

That morning it seemed to me again that I woke up ready to move mountains, but, however, this was far from being true, as always. I did not realize that when I woke up in the morning, my deepest sleep was not in a dream at night, but in reality. It was even deeper than the one in which I stayed after long working days. Those days that became whole days at my work all nights long and at the end of the week I fell on the bed, falling asleep and justifying myself in the morning with the fact that this sleep until 12 o’clock on the weekend was simply necessary for me. And it really was the deepest sleep in which I had been into not for the first year, that year it just began to reveal itself more strongly. A sleep in which I forgot about my parents and loved ones, about the opportunity to travel, about the joy at the moment of eating a watermelon, about the melody of the soul, about running early in the morning with some dew, about my teachers and students, about my potential and appearance, about the taste of dill in my parents’ garden, about the smell of a motorcycle from my childhood, about the starry sky in August and about everything that my life offered me to learn. To learn that I was this life.

Life in which there is no pain, resentment, guilt, duty, irritation, dislike, hatred and fear. The fear of tomorrow that stops so many people at the moment of choice – to develop or stay in their cocoon: where it is safe, but scary, where it is damp, but familiar, where it is not interesting, but definite. Where the world does not exist, instead of it there is a small room – that very little world in which it is cramped, stuffy and faceless. And often everyone wants to break out of it, but a person gets used to living and waiting like that. Waiting until someone wakes them up and shows them the way, returns their own will to them and endows them with fortitude, but this does not happen, it happens exactly the opposite way. And it is a pity that not every person is aware of this, not everyone is aware of this in their youth, and not everyone will see their own path that will allow them to get to know themselves without a struggle. To find out that the answers are inside them and that now is the time to start living, being, loving and creating. I didn’t realize it either, until that morning I heard the phrase behind the door of a little room: “The world is not perfect, look at what country you live in”. When it was said, I recognized this phrase and realized that I had already heard it somewhere.

СHAPTER 2

The plane was gaining altitude, I was looking at the board “fasten your seat belts”, feeling the wind swinging the tail of the plane a little. As usual, my palms were sweating from the climb, which felt like pressure on my eardrums and a slight gasp in my solar plexus. On the plane I always felt the height differently than when I went up, for example, the mountains and looked down from a rocky cliff – at such moments I felt fear and a certain force pulling you into the unknown. On the plane I felt that this height had something clean and free, there was no this pulling force, the only exception were the turns of the plane, as it seemed to me, at a steep angle, they were the main cause of my strong fear. Fear, showing me that I could not control anything being in an aluminum spacesuit with other passengers.

The time was coming up to ten sharp in the evening, there was cloudy damp weather behind the glass of the porthole – it was either snowing or raining. Such weather was more typical of autumn, but definitely not of winter, which came fifteen days ago. I remember that at that time in the capital, good weather always visited me at the moments when I got on a plane and rose above the clouds, although to be more precise, I visited this weather like a traveler who got tired of slush and mud. At night, like a small child, I always looked at the sky, starting to study it from brighter stars, and later observing less bright ones, which I often did not even notice when I was on the ground, but in the night sky, already flying above the clouds, I saw them sparkling to me against the dark sky with the moon. “So interesting…” — I thought, — “…but some of these stars have long gone out, only the light remains, which reaches us after many years and overcomes the distance of millions of kilometers. Like a person who dies, but they are remembered and memories of them also light the way for many others in a series of events, where there is a huge number of other bright and still living stars”. This thought drove me crazy, caused some strange feeling of non-existence, as if at such moments I fell into something unknown to me, but existing beyond my reality. They also say that a person seems to have fallen into a parallel reality, where the whole scenery remains the same, but feelings change and become extremely unusual for the human mind, but they are familiar to one’s consciousness. Especially if this consciousness has been in a constant lack of energy and without human will for a long time. In this state a person experiences fear, which strengthens their opinion of themselves, and this opinion rarely coincides with their desire to create and appear in this world, it is closer to self-destruction and self-flagellation. Unfortunately, not every person is immediately able to see that they are in such a state, because for a long time they deny themselves due to the expectations that they have outlined in their head. Rarely do people accept reality as it is, but if we speak about it and understand it more deeply, a person rarely accepts themselves in this reality, which is just a reflection of their state of consciousness. And the greater the rejection is, the stronger reality will put pressure on them and force them to return their attention to themselves and realize the reason in themselves, because according to the physics, to every action there is an equal but opposite reaction. One day, the reality will nevertheless “win the fight” with a person, where they will put their own indifference towards themselves at the forefront for a long time, since the reality is not only a reflection of a person’s inner consciousness, but also one of the parties, which is – a little more than the person themselves – interested in their survival and appearance in this world, despite the fact that this reality often seems to us to be pretty harsh. Harsh, but merciful.

On that cloudy evening everything was as usual – my gaze was following Sheremetyevo airport through the porthole window and I was waiting for a meeting with the night starry sky, marking the time on the phone. I did not wear a wrist watch at that time, I had a bracelet on my right hand instead of it, which reminded me of Thailand. The bracelet looked like a thread that the monkshad tied to me in a monastery on Koh Samui three years ago.

I clearly remember that trip, it was after returning from Thailand that I began to wake up from a mental dream and write my first articles, which became the beginning of my awakening. Then, being in Pattaya, I could not even imagine what awaited me in the next few years and who I would meet on my way. At that time, I did not even guess that one of those future meetings would be so unexpected and long-awaited that, if I had known about it earlier, I would definitely have brought this moment closer. But in order to do this it was important to simply put your mind and body in order, feel the state of inner silence and freedom, regain your will and fortitude. What was impossible at that time, given the complete opposite of my condition and my actions, in those years of despair and unjustified hopes. Somehow at that time I rarely thought about the content of my thoughts that were in my head, and even more so I did not think about the content of the words that I said out loud so often. These words caused constant resistance from those surrounding me, although I thought that it was me, they had been resisting all this time. Not to mention that my actions in those years were more like trying to win people over and earn their love rather than if they were simply aimed at realizing my own potential which I came into this world with. For me, love, as a feeling, had not existed at all for a long time, I knew that there was such a word that one could use to confess to a person in their feelings, but I had no idea if it was love I confessed to them in. Over the time, I began to notice that many of us say the phrase “I love you” not in a state of love, but out of guilt, duty or resentment, and sometimes out of fear with the expectation that in return we will also be told we are loved.

For several years now, a dialogue with myself has been steadily spinning in my head. Once I caught myself feeling that there were two personalities inside me, and what was strange – it didn’t even bother me. As if one wanted ease, longed for action, knew about eternal happiness, love and joy, another one complicated everything and tried to explain that nothing was easy, that it was important to go through difficulties and all the circles of hell in order to become happy.The most interesting thing was that I knew who would win again in this confrontation between them. And that’s why I didn’t do anything anymore – my will no longer belonged to me. At that moment, my smile and that sincere look, like those of a child, disappeared somewhere. It seemed to me that I would live my whole life like this – in the eternal struggle for a place under the sun, when others would succeed so easily that they would not even notice us. Those of us – “others” who continue to climb in the same way as before in the expanses of their swamps, with heaviness in the soul and a pulse in the temples. Getting up every day and walking to work, which has long become a routine for each of us, we even tried to build our own business, which did not make us successful, as we were promised at that time by those who taught us business. I remember how I looked with caution at those who managed to live in ease and harmony with themselves. All the time it seemed to me that they were from another planet and lived in a different reality.

In those years, I was especially visited by one feeling that for some reason I was ignoring for a long period, you know, this feeling always wakes up in the subcortex of your consciousness at those moments when you are ready to stop trying, give up what you have planned and quit everything you’ve started, but it shoots you right into the heart, just like first love. And that feeling is a feeling of faith. Faith that allows you to realize the forces in yourself that turn on all your fortitude, might and courage, it is thanks to faith that you remember that you already lived like this at one time, but for some reason forgot about it, and now you’ve recollected it and filled yourself with memories and strengthened your spirit with them.

Back then I did not realize that I was damn right thinking about this thought while flying by plane, but neither I nor my people had the will to believe and realize it. Over time I already saw that some of my acquaintances were just drinking buddies for just having a drink at a bar on a Saturday evening and talking again about great plans on the balcony of my rented bachelor apartment. After the bar, I always returned home in the morning to get enough sleep unwilling to understand again that everything had returned to its place and again not to feel the morning transition from one dream to another, which provided us with the reality where we could once again do nothing.

Nothing changed, I was in a state of complete apathy and did not want to understand anything, and even more so to know and accept my own desires, which had led me to all these feelings. Each time, as I just started my way into all this jungle, a feeling of injustice woke up in me. The feeling that arose in me as a child at the age of seven, although I didn’t know what to do with this feeling, like a child stuck at the age of seven, I was putting up with it and suppressing it in myself for all the following years. At the same time, every moment in which I felt some kind of injustice in the outside world, somewhere in the depths of my soul, I still knew that everything would be fine with me. This was what I occasionally felt – as if in a certain state of mine someone reminded me of this.

And instead of reinforcing this feeling and relying on it, I brought it back to life but didn’t care about it, and again ran to the outside world to tell and show everyone – “Look, now everything is fine with me too”, like with those who I constantly thought about, making myself even weaker. At that time, I did not realize that with such behavior and my own manifestation, I again flew down to the very bottom, draining my energy and with my last ounce of strength again clutching at life with words and cries towards those who had not believed in me for a long time. All these thoughts at that period had already become a part of me for a long time, and even though I was flying to rest to a glorious city in France, I was constantly scrolling through them in my head. Just as I was engrossed in them again, the pilot-in-command announced, in a far from cheerful voice, that the travel time would be four hours and five minutes and that the estimated time of arrival in the French capital would be twelve hours twenty minutes a.m. local time. In the end, he added that very soon we would be offered drinks and a light snack.

I turned back to see if she was asleep and saw that the plane was full of sleeping people. At that moment, I caught myself feeling global fatigue – as if everyone who was sitting on the plane with their mouths open and their eyes closed had been waiting for the weekend all year round and was looking forward to New Year, which would come in just a couple of weeks. I didn’t feel like sleeping at all, I was waiting for the moment when the plane would gain altitude and it would be possible to unfasten the seat belts in order to walk around the cabin until the lights were turned on. I always found a porthole, where no one was near, to look at the tiny stars in the distance, which seemed to become closer, when observing them from the height of ten thousand meters and the Moon, which was illuminating the sky with its bright light. It was always very soft and at the same time somehow clean.

I continued to look thoughtfully at the front seat on the right, which was reflecting a flashing red light overboard. It always flashed on the right wing of the plane in red, and on the left wing in green, causing some kind of peace and quiet in my mind. I was very rarely in this state, I was always distracted by background noise or my own thoughts instead. Catching a state of ease, I heard a familiar voice behind me – it was very sweet, although a little hoarse when awake:

— Could you hand me your sweatshirt? I’m cold, – she said, wrapping a blanket around her head.

— Yeah, just a moment. I’ll get it out of my backpack, — I answered and began to get my backpack out from under the front seat.

When I was handing her the sweatshirt, on the seat that was behind me I heard a familiar sound that meant that we had gained altitude and the belts could be unfastened. This sound was followed by the clicks of seat belts throughout the cabin of the plane, which for some reason always reminded me of triggered mousetraps. It was as if more than a hundred of them had been placed loaded in one room, and the chain reaction had done its job. A moment later, on board the main lights were turned on. “Damn it! I didn’t have time to admire the starry sky”, – I thought and, waking up the Frenchwoman on my left hand, I stood up, stretched out to my full height, and, turning half around, went to the tail section towards the toilet.

At that moment, I did not want to remember the whole way, how we got to the airport and in general, how I had been planning this whole trip, but these thoughts were haunting me. There are times when everything runs smoothly – everything happens as if by itself, but not this time. This journey had so many sticks in the wheels as much as I had not seen in all twenty-seven years of my life. At that moment, it seemed to me that someone was constantly standing in my way and preventing me from living my own life. It was as if some kind of shadow was always falling on all my desires, where I wanted ease, and I thought that something that I had been waiting for so long, dreaming about and imagining for a long time, was about to happen but everything once again failed – this was a familiar result for me. While I was on my way to the toilet, the plane started shaking violently and the aircraft commander announced that we were in a zone of turbulence and everyone needed to take their seats.

“That’s the last thing we need”, – I thought, and reluctantly walked back to my seat. My discontent was felt throughout this phrase – and it was not because I did not go to the toilet and not even because I did not see the starry sky, the discontent only reflected one of my fears – I had always been afraid to fly by plane. This fear had always appeared clearly precisely at the moments of passing through the turbulence zone.

From time to time, I caught myself in a certain kind of fear. Sometimes I got the impression that I was specifically looking for a new fear in order to once again feel life through some other feelings that arose in me as a result of fear. Usually in that period these feelings were irritation, resistance and being at a loss. Being at a loss was a special feeling, getting into which, I did not know how to behave and what to do next, due to the fact that I could not control myself at such moments. For others it looked rather strange. A twenty-seven-year-old guy was afraid to fly by plane and, instead of fear, he tried to show himself through completely different feelings, which at least somehow smoothed out his true self. Beyond any of my fears, there was something bigger and really deep that I was unable to accept and discover. In an attempt to prove the opposite, I pretended that nothing was happening, thereby showing everyone that in this state I remained effective, and the most ridiculous thing was that I managed to convince many people of this. The moment I heard the clicks of seatbelts again in the cabin, I didn’t realize that I was sinking deeper and deeper into a dream that we, humans, often don’t even know about. At the time, I didn’t know or didn’t want to know that I was also dreaming. And that the whole plane on the way from Moscow to Paris was the most vivid reflection of my condition – the aircraft commander with his far from cheerful voice, tired sleeping passengers on the plane, waiting for New year like a new starting point and that turbulence zone with its abnormal swaying and shaking. I was unaware and ignorant about what was happening to me, constantly asking myself the same question: “Why can’t I have everything like other people do?” Back then I could not know the answers to many questions, although I thought I knew a lot.

She was also on the plane – very calm and knowing me more than I knew myself. We met recently, it happened in one of the offices of a large company, where she worked as a producer, and I stopped by this office on business. She always told me that in order to get to know a person, you did not need to live with them all your life, for this just to feel them was enough. For example, at the moments when they breathe next to you, kiss you or make jokes, at the moments when they take your hand, laugh or hug you. She felt me very well, which could not be said about me. I saw her turn over to the other side, and at that moment I was restlessly waiting for the second when we would pass the turbulence zone and I would be able to breathe in the air with relief and pretend that I had not experienced any fear during this time. The most interesting thing was that I very often did this in my life, feeling fear, I squeezed out a completely different feeling. Not realizing that by showing a different feeling, I played a different role, which meant that I ceased to be myself. In such games I lost the thread of connection with the reality and became heavy, silent and harsh. “It is always more difficult to love the person who needs love the most” – and this phrase from the movie “Peaceful Warrior” was definitely about me. I really needed love, which I buried in myself so deeply that I could not feel it in myself through all the pain that I caused myself and through the irritation that appeared as a result of my dependence on someone else’s role. And the longer I ignored myself, the longer and more irritated I became.

Back to row seven, I hopped into the chair interfering some French dialogue and tugged my seatbelt tight. At that moment, I felt that I was hungry and, with my usual joy, I began to wait for the seatbelt display to go out again and drinks with light snacks to be taken out. There were two and a half hours left to fly to Paris.

At the altitude of eleven thousand meters, I have always caught myself thinking that somewhere under my feet, millions of inhabitants of this planet are going to work or have returned to their homes and are resting after it. For some reason, it has always seemed to me that few people travel and the reasons can be different – someone, like me, is afraid to fly, someone has not saved the right amount of money for travel, and someone does not have an airport in their hometown. My city also had none, and there is none today either. Being a little boy, Iremember I loved to watch planes from the ground and imagine how someone was flying on vacation or to an important meeting. Now, when I fly on another trip or for negotiations, I wonder myself if there is a boy like that somewhere down there, who also looks at the plane and thinks about what I thought about when I was little. I’m sure there is one. And he will grow up very soon. “The main thing is that he does not forget about himself and about those feelings that he appeared through not so long ago at birth, otherwise the path of returning to himself promises to be difficult and long”, – I thought and felt the warm touch of hands on my shoulders. This touch meant that she woke up, and I was very glad about it. Because I knew that the thought that I was thinking before her touch “otherwise the path of returning to myself promises to be difficult and long” – meant only one thing – the main thing was that he wouldn’t become the same as me. And like those who forgot about themselves. “Everyone has time to recollect themselves”, – I thought, and after a moment I heard a phrase that was familiar to me in a dialogue of two men: “The world is not perfect, look at what country you live in”.

CHAPTER 3

“The taxi has arrived, it’s time for us to leave”, – I said to Tom who had been in two minds for a long time whether to go to see me off or stay in the apartment to have enough time to prepare for his important meeting. That day I was returning back to Moscow, it was the eighth of September on the calendar, two thousand ten. Outside the window, sitting in the back seat of an old Lincoln, I could watch the foliage fall and the passing cars pick it up again with their trail, which they left on the roads of New York. We left Brooklyn in the direction of JFK airport, and at that moment I discovered that I had forgotten my documents in the apartment where I had lived for three summer months and where I would definitely want to return six months after returning home. The driver at the wheel spoke English in about the same way as I did, which meant it was much easier to explain things to him than to any other English-speaking driver. After a couple of minutes, he turned his car around and, speeding up, as if we were going to take off, began telling his beloved on the phone about another strange passenger from Russia. I firmly understood that New York wouldn’t let me go, and I didn’t really want to leave myself, but I was being waited for in Russia for one meeting, which had been agreed on before I left for the USA. On the way back to the apartment, which was located in a house at the intersection of Avenue C and 8 East Street in Brooklyn, next to Cortelyou Road subway station, for some reason I was not thinking about the fact that I might be late for my plane and not even about whether my documents were at home. At that moment, I was recollecting how I happened to be here by a lucky chance, this also concerned the country itself, and, of course, the state of New York, in which I stayed. At first, I stayed in it for a couple of days, then for a week, and a week later I decided to stay for the whole summer. Initially, according to the plans, I had to go to Boston immediately upon arrival, but due to the lack of tickets at the only bus station I knew about at that time, I had to stay late and look for an overnight stay in the city nicknamed The Big Apple.

The first minutes I got off at the bus station, I was visited by some conflicting feelings. There were only skyscrapers around me, people were rushing somewhere across the road, which yellow taxis and white collars on roller skates or scooters were passing along. Merchants were going everywhere with some bags, there was strange hopelessness in their eyes and what was most reflected was fear. Across the street I saw a policeman chasing a guy with a blanket wrapped around some bags and understood why the merchant who was next to me caused such ambiguous feelings in me. Along one of the Catholic churches with magnificent architecture, street residents of Manhattan were sitting on cardboard boxes, they were smiling at passers-by, and at one point it even seemed to me that they were the only happy people in this big city. It was as if the whole city was running around them, and they were just watching and waiting for the moment when all this hustle and bustle on the streets of New York would subside to relax and enjoy the morning silence of the metropolis again.

After walking past a few blocks, I reached the well-known Forty-second Street, which was crossed by the equally famous Broadway. It was one of my most unforgettable acquaintances with myself — the storm of feelings that appeared in me at that moment, gave me pleasure not only for an instant, as it had been before, but they were also remembered for my whole life. The high screens that broadcast Coca-Cola advertisements, the store of Forever21 and other well-known brands shone so brightly that at night they accurately illuminated all the nearby streets with their multicolored light. At that moment, I wanted to stay in this city even more: to walk through Central Park, to see in person “Duncan’s Chest” and “Plaza Hotel” from the movie “Home Alone. Lost in New York”, to take a yellow taxi along the Brooklyn Bridge and a popular rickshaw to the shops on Fifth Avenue. The feeling that I became the main character of my film had been with me since the moment I saw Times Square. The melody of “Jingle Bells” was playing in my mind, to which my imagination was drawing dancing Santa Clauses, although it was only June and about thirty degrees of heat outside. I pulled up the suitcase closer to my feet, because there were coming more and more people around me, but I didn’t feel that I was bothering someone or someone was bothering me. On the contrary, the feeling that I was expected here had not left me since the moment I just left the bus station on Eighth Avenue. Some planes were making circles in the sky, leaving a trail of exhaust smoke in the air behind them. It was pretty accurately tracing the titles of advertising campaigns, usually these were the websites of some insurance companies. The mounted police were taking pictures with passing tourists and smiling at everyone who caught their eye. A couple of hours later, when I was already sitting in the center next to the red staircase at Times Square, I simultaneously felt hunger, joy and calmness, which was the realization that I was in my place. At that moment I was myself — hungry for everything new, with unshakable faith and burning zeal to explore my possibilities in this huge country of capitalism, on another continent of our planet. After all, I ended up there — being a very young, twenty-year-old boy who came not to conquer it, but to get acquainted with himself. Before New York, there had been only two big cities in my life, I personally was from a small provincial town located in the south of one of the republics of our vast country.

Closer to ten o’clock in the evening, I found an Internet cafe with computers and, having bought Internet access for the price of one coffee, which was only one dollar, I logged into a social network. Fortunately, while still at JFK airport after landing, I left a post on my page, which to a greater extent determined my presence throughout all three months. The post was as follows: “I’m in New York, everything is fine”, – I wrote it for my parents, who also, shortly before my departure from Russia, had asked me to register their accounts in a social network. This post was seen by my friend Tom, a Russian — speaking American, who I met at my close friend’s party in honor of her twentieth birthday, just a month and a half before my arrival in the United States, he had flown to Russia to congratulate her. Tom turned out to be a very hospitable guy. If his move to New York had not coincided with my arrival, then we might not have met. On that day, the eighth of June, he was just connecting a mobile phone, and when he saw the post on my page, he left a message with the phone number of New York state so that I would call him if I saw his incoming letter.

In the Internet cafe, I met two Russian-speaking women, they were having a very emotional discussion of the new taxation in the state of New Jersey. At that moment, I caught myself thinking that it felt as if I was in one of the regions of our country. It was odd: I was in the center of Manhattan at a distance of seven and a half thousand kilometers from Moscow, I wanted to drink coffee and suddenly heard a conversation on the topics that had been flashing around me very often lately. Having stopped thinking about things, which I thought to be irrelevant at that moment, I approached one of the ladies and politely asked to borrow a phone for a couple of minutes to give my friend Tom a call.

I knew that he was waiting for my call, otherwise why to leave me his mobile phone number in an incoming email just a couple of minutes ago. I didn’t realize then that if I hadn’t listened to the conversation of these lovely ladies, I might not have contacted my friend. At that moment, time played a significant part. These few minutes were very important, because if I had opened my mailbox ten minutes earlier, I might not have waited for his letter. Out of habit I started to dial the phone number with plus seven, I asked the owner of the phone to help me figure out the buttons on the phone and show the “delete” button. After a couple of seconds, I was dialing +1 347-666-9026.

— Hello, hello… Is that Tom?

— Yeah-yeah … This is Tom. Have you arrived? Where are you? — he asked me with his usual joy, which he felt not only because of people, but of himself as well.

— Where am I? — putting the phone a little to the side, I asked one of the ladies.

— This is Forty — second Street and Eighth Avenue, I think, – one of them said out loud uncertainly.

— Tom, I… — before I could finish, Tom immediately replied in my phone:

— I heard, wait for me there, I’m twenty minutes away from you, I’ll be there soon! – answering with confidence, he hung up.

After thanking each of the ladies and returning the phone to them, I went back to the computer, logged out of the social network, took a suitcase in my hand, slung my backpack over my shoulder and wandered towards the exit to meet Tom. I really wanted to eat, besides, I also wanted to take a shower. “I shouldn’t have put on a shirt, I had to take some T-shirts with me”, — I thought and stopped so as not to miss the meeting which my overnight stay depended on that evening.

Without stopping my gaze at the cars passing by, I was thinking at that moment about what a happy person I was — my dream had come true. This was my first dream that I was able to realize in my life and everything happened so spontaneously that I could not imagine. Four months ago, I was still in Russia, and my father and I were going to visit my sister. Back then my father bought a car which smelt of a new vehicle and I, like any other guy, was visited by thoughts of also getting some kind of supported one. That year started off with good results in wages for me, and I even saved my first hundred thousand rubles, which were lying on a shelf in a small bedside table that stood next to my bed.

At the traffic lights, when we reached the intersection, I shared my impression with my father about the convenience of being a passenger and casually said about my idea of buying a secondhand car. A moment later, I accidentally saw an ad on a pole “Work and travel in America” and as if someone had said for me:

— Or should I go to America? — I was surprised at the question myself, waiting for what my father would tell me.

— If there is an opportunity — go, you never know when there is another chance like that, — he answered confidently and with maximum support.

A day later I was already filing the documents.

I heard a familiar voice behind me, it was Tom and I was incredibly glad to see him. Both of us, as it turned out, wanted not only to eat something delicious, but also to share our impressions that New York gave us in the first hours of visiting it.

Tom took my suitcase and, smiling with all thirty-two teeth, led us towards the nearest subway station, telling me how he got settled in Brooklyn and already spent almost all the money he had been saving for the move. I knew that I had four hundred dollars in the inside pocket of my backpack, of which I planned to live off for the first time in Boston until I found a job in the unofficial capital of New England region.

It was hot outside in the evening too. Although the air was not dry, apparently due to the fact that Manhattan is washed on one side by the Hudson River, and on the other by the East River, light humidity appears. I felt a cool breath of air after the phrase “stand clear of the closing doors please”, which I would repeat every time in my head throughout the journey, daily getting on the train. The doors of the train closed, and it rushed towards the Manhattan Bridge, carrying us at high speeds towards our home, which would become my home for the following three months. Tom didn’t ask me how I had flown and how I had gotten to the bus station. And even more so, he didn’t ask questions about why I wasn’t in Boston yet. Not because he wasn’t interested in it or he didn’t want to be polite to me, but he simply knew that everything was always fine, and in order to understand and feel it, he didn’t need to ask unnecessary questions.

Instead, he was smiling and watching the lights of high-rise buildings that were moving away from us at breakneck speed, accompanied by a slight rocking of the train as we were passing through the world-famous bridge. Tom looked like a small child who saw himself in the mirror for the first time, he was observing everything so attentively, examining every detail that caught his eye. His gaze was so pure and sincere that I got interested in the view from the window of the railcar. It looked funny enough to others: the fact that I, a fully-grown twenty-year-old lad, was trying to repeat the look of another grown-up. I immediately remembered myself as a boy who, as a child, had repeated his father’s laughter when watching some humorous show and, because of his age, had not understood the meaning of the jokes uttered by the comedian.

Tom definitely hooked me, as if he was my brother — in his gaze there were no thoughts about the crisis, nor about politics, nor that his parents were waiting for him somewhere and missing him, nor about problems, nor that he was running out of money. There was a feeling that he didn’t think about anything at all, but just lived every moment of his life. There was emptiness and silence in his gaze, he just listened to everything that was happening in his purest consciousness, like a little child, and by my big assumption that was why I also felt like a child after a while. Tom turned to me as if he had heard my thoughts and asked happily:

— How do you find New York? Do you like it?