Journeys in the Search for the Meaning of Life. A story of those who have found it. Rami Bleckt
yards apart. She got up with difficulty. Arthur's first impulse was to get up and help her and to stop the guys from jeering, but he didn't do anything; instead he just stood there, laughing, although not so loudly.
Once she got up, she saw that Arthur was part of the group. Even though they were far apart, you could tell that this initially hurt her some more. She then continued walking with great effort, limping painfully and holding her arm bent unnaturally.
She didn't come to school the next day. And only several days later did Arthur resolve to call her. But Lena would either not answer or she would hang up the receiver once she heard his voice. Her mother brought a doctor's note to school stating that she had severely sprained her knee and broken her wrist; in addition, she had gotten a cold while walking home and would not return for at least several weeks. She got a cast on her arm and leg and studied on her own at home.
She returned to school after New Year's break. As for her and Arthur, they basically never talked. Arthur had gone up to her and said, "Oh, come on, let's let it go…" but she gave him a long, hard look and calmly replied,
"You know, it's not important how much we read about honorable deeds, but instead how capable a person is of being a friend, and how honorable we are in our actions in life. Only animals, lowly animals, live by a herd mentality."
To hear 'honorable' cut him like a knife, and in a way it sounded new to him… He was ashamed, although she spoke plainly, without reproach. She spoke of how our character is revealed by our knowledge, our education, and who we truly are. Likewise, we are affected by our dependence on peer pressure and group influence over us, and no one loves traitors and cowards. We should learn to be friends and just good people instead of well-versed, arrogant and cowardly men.
He feigned a writhing pain in his face to try and make a joke of it all, but she left with a sorrowful look on her face. He felt an internal loathing of himself.
In the ensuing months he watched several films, all of which spoke of friendship, virtuous behavior, and honor, and derided cowards and traitors. The book by Kaverin, "Two Captains,"[1] affected him especially deeply.
Arthur finished school but this lesson in life remained with him for a long, long time. From that point on he swore an oath to try and be honorable and never to let anyone down or betray them.
Chapter III
From Poor Student to Wealthy Entrepreneur
Arthur finished school among the top students, mainly thanks to his parents getting him a tutor. They dreamed of him being accepted into a respected college. He studied earnestly and, with his father's help, he entered a prestigious Moscow institute, what made his parents happy and proud.
His first year was hard but in his second year he was able to find some free time for himself. He started going to various parties with friends but they didn't particularly attract him or give him much pleasure.
The parties mainly revolved around irresponsible thrills – drinking, making low-class jokes, and spending time with some girl or other who was devoid of any moral standards. He'd wake up in the morning with a person who meant nothing to him and what he felt wasn't any personal satisfaction but more a kind of emptiness or dullness in his head. He thought to himself, "Is this really what life is all about?"
Just to get some animalistic sex, he would have to go to the other side of Moscow, breathe cigarette smoke, drink lousy cocktails, listen to dirty jokes, participate in dumb conversations, criticize someone or other, and discuss the latest gossip.
He really preferred to go to the theater and meet interesting people. Many of his fellow students would snicker at him about this, but it didn't bother him.
Likewise, his teachers caused him to think about the meaning of life. After all, they were people assumed, by default, to be leaders; they were expected to know the answers to many questions and to help society prosper.
They got a good salary with benefits at the institute, and it wasn't that hard to get their degrees. That's why many teachers, former students of the institute themselves, had been eager to work there after they finished their studies or, having worked for some time in their fields, they returned to the institute to assume teaching duties. Arthur observed that they were not the happiest of people.
To get on the staff, some of them resorted to ugly tactics: they would spread stories of something bad a colleague had done, scheme against them, and try to use their connections to get a position they wanted.
Over time, they became more bitter and dissatisfied; many began to drink despite their growing salaries and high degrees. Only two teachers differentiated themselves from the rest through their calmness and peacefulness. You could tell that they wanted no part of this "office politics". They came from good families.
One of the older teachers surprised Arthur. He had taught courses on scientific communism and often spoke of morals. At the very start of the perestroika[2] period, however, he left the institute and opened a bar. He sold liquor to students and made a number of shady deals.
Arthur thought about all these things many times and asked teachers about the meaning of life. They told him that the reason for being was to raise oneself in society's standing. "We should become socially successful individuals, accomplished professionally, becoming, for instance, engineers, officers, doctors, leaders…"
This was nothing new to him; they had said the same stuff in school. "All right," he thought, "So I devote from 20 to 30 years of my life to be a professor. And that's all? That's the meaning of life?
Once, however, Arthur was at a reception for a well-known artist who had attained everything he had dreamed of in his career – fame, fortune, devotees. Yet the artist himself admitted that he was feeling less and less happy about life, although he led an exciting lifestyle and increasingly received awards and gained new admirers. This all forced Arthur to consider and reconsider his future. At any rate, he knew that it was important for him to graduate, but then after that he would make a cardinal change in his life.
While still a schoolboy, Arthur knew that physical health was a requirement in life – without it you could neither attain much nor would you really enjoy it. He understood that you had to pay attention to your body. He was glad to do it: he actively played several sport games, hiked in summer, practiced bodybuilding and had a strong, tight body.
Just before Arthur graduated in the late 1980s, perestroika had begun.
In his last year, he read Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelag. He saw the internal rot of the system which had inflicted its deceit, lies, and forced on tens of millions of people. He had no desire to work for the government, although he was offered work there, work which would've given him the opportunity to travel abroad regularly, a rare and special perk in those days. He readily rejected a number of tempting offers, some of which came as a result of his parents' connections and others which came as a 'package deal' from families offering a daughter. For months he had gotten a series of invitations from very influential people who offered him to get to know and marry their daughters. It turns out he was quite the promising bachelor: he neither drank nor smoked and his education promised an excellent career.
One well-connected man put it like this, "Look, as a wedding present I'll give you a new GAZ-24 car and keys to your own condo and I'll help you get ahead in your career." But he refused all the tempting offers and preferred to get his diploma free of any ties that would obligate him after graduation.
He passed his exams quite well, graduating with honors. He stayed in the dorm for several months afterward because he had injured his knee in sports.
Those days the first manifestations of freedom of speech appeared – television and newspapers didn't have communist slogans. Privately-owned stores and restaurants arrived, ushering in a new milestone in the economy.
One day at lunch in the institute's cafeteria, he met a man named Orlovsky. He offered Arthur a job taking care of certain boxes he would bring to him. "Hey, you can't walk anyway yet. May as well get paid for doing something," he told Arthur with a wink.
His
This book won millions of hearts with its sympathetic and incredibly noble heroes.
Perestroika, literally 'rebuilding', was the period during which the Soviet Union changed its economy to a capitalist-style open market.