WBEZ’s Sasha-Ann Simmons ran the Bias Against Bodies podcast for most of 2023. Here are just three of the episodes.
Category: reflections
I Can’t…
Several times this year, I told myself that I should write something in Russian on Russian social media because I know people for whom reading in English is difficult, and I know that Google Translate does not do justice. I admire those who can write in Russian without compromising themselves. I can’t. Each time I try, I come across people who blog as if everything is normal and it’s OK to wish each other a happy and healthy new year. It might sound not fair because I also blog about “normal stuff,” but I still can’t get over that. Maybe I should rephrase it. It’s not about what people write about but more about whether they consider their lives “normal.” That’s a breaking point for me.
I have friends whom I love and support, and I know that they experience the same outrage reading these “life goes on” posts. For their sake, I should be more present, but each time I try, I feel that I can’t be sincere in liking “all the best in the New Year” posts.
Another possibility is to have a Russian language blog on this platform, which I contemplated several times but never tried. I know that those who get into trouble going to another social media platform just to be able to read what I am writing are people who share my values. I want to be able to keep talking to them.
Between Christmas And New Year
I like this time of the year. I might not be celebrating the New Year as many of the ex-Soviet people do, but I am not one who exclaims, “What’s so special about this day?!” I do look at what I’ve done in the year that is about to be over, and I like it when I hear the year-end podcasts and interviews on the radio. No matter how arbitrary the date is, I like the idea of looking back and seeing what went well and what didn’t, what I can do to correct the course, and what all of us can do to make the world a better place.
That being said, a couple of Time Magazine articles that caught my attention during this holiday week:
Why New Year resolutions fail – I was always curious just about that, and this article gives an interesting perspective (and I added several books to my reading list)
Thirteen ways the world got better in 2023 – A very important reading for obvious reasons. The article lists important breakthroughs in fighting climate change, advances in medicine, and crime reduction.
9 mental health resolutions – The one I never thought of is “develop empathy for someone different from you.” One thing that always puzzles me is “time for yourself.” I think that whatever I am doing is “time for myself,” because I am doing what I want to do, and you will have hard time convincing me otherwise!
And finally, the essay about a new year resolution that resonates with me (most likely because it’s for my age group).
Since there is more than one article today, I am not copying the whole text, so if any of my readers from Russia have difficulties accessing them, please let me know, I will make separate posts for each of them.
***
I spent more than an hour trying to say something, but I am giving up: I do not have enough words (or proper words) to describe how I feel. So let me say just that: this year, I am most thankful for Boris being here and helping me in all possible ways: with Postgres things and with personal things, and with everything, giving me the support that helped me to move along and avoid burnout. I won’t be where I am now without him, and my gratitude has no limit 🙂
Your Future Self
I recently read the book Your Future Self by Hal Hershfield. Although, in the end, the book didn’t impress me that much, I liked the main idea of it. The author states that we often base important decisions on our relationships with our “future selves.” When you think about yourself in the future, ten, twenty, or even thirty years from now, can you imagine your future self as a person? Do you think about that person as a stranger or as “you”? Can you imagine what your future self will enjoy doing? Multiple psychological experiments demonstrated that if an individual thinks about their future self as the same person, they usually make important decisions about their life choice considering their future benefits. To put it in more straightforward words, a person who identifies themself with a “future self” would be more inclined to contribute to their 401(k) and exercise regularly. This example is rather primitive, but you get the idea.
Although, as I said, the book overall didn’t impress me (there are many repetitions, and the author does not go into more complex behavioral examples), I was thinking a lot about that concept. It was new to me, and naturally, I wanted to apply it to myself.
Although my life taught me that I should never presume that things will go a certain way, and although I am always ready for surprises, I definitely think about the future me as “me,” and I care about this person, and I do not expect that they would like some tedious tasks more than I like them now, or that they won’t like to do things I am currently doing. And that’s probably why I spend time on planning for the retirement and potential long-term care and I like having a very detailed plan for my retirement years. However, there are some other aspects of the “future self”, which many Goodreads reviews mention: it’s not only about your financial and physical well-being, but also what kind of a person you will be, and whether you will hold to the same values. Right now, when I think about my retirement, I think about how much more volunteering I will be able to do, and how many new things I would try. Nobody can guarantee that this idea will stay with me, but as of that moment, I definitely associated myself with my future self.
Recently, I often think about “what will happen after,” not tragically, but simply thinking about it more realistically: one day it will happen. One day, I won’t wake up (an optimistic scenario). And yes, I think about leaving money for charities, but not because “I will be recognized, ” but because I truly believe in the causes. I thought about it a lot recenlty: I do not need to have a name on a brick, because it won’t matter when I die. I am not sure whether I expressed my phots clear enough, but it really won’t matter. The only thing matters is what we are doing the right thing now, when you are still alive and can do it.
Family
After the Thanksgiving dinner, my mom told Anna that she was “the only person in that family who had a normal family.” Later, Boris commented that I’d pretended that this statement was not related to us. To be honest, I heard so many things from my mom that nothing can surprise me, so although I realize that my mom meant Vlad’s family, my own family, and Igor’s absence of the family, I can happily ignore what she says.
Last week, however, I was really surprised by what she said. Actually, it was not the first time she said the same thing, but I was surprised she brought it up again. She said that she was sorry that life was so unfair to me that I didn’t have any special romantic relationships. This statement was so off the charts that it took me a lot of self-reflection not to say anything (when I told Boris about that, the look of surprise on his face was something I do not see that often:)).
My mom refers to one of her life stories when there was a person with whom she met once or twice a month for a couple of years, and they would go to the theater performance or to one of many suburban palace parks around Saint Petersburg. He also recorded lengthy messages on tape for her (she saved them, and I digitized them several years ago.) When she talks about these relationships, she proudly says that “there was no sex or anything like this” and that “nowadays, people can’t even imagine that it is possible.” I do not understand why having sexless relationships is something to be proud of and something I should regret not having. Sometimes, I really want to ask her whether she ever had a satisfying sexual life – ever. Also, I find it very difficult to understand why having six years of marriage to my father, and then having a couple of these sexless stories, and then having over ten years of secret relationships with a married man in Moscow – why this is more “normal” and better than my family life.
Family life and life in general is not about romantic escapades. It’s about building a life together, understanding each other, and supporting each other in all possible ways. I understand that when you are seventeen, you might think that love is about demonstrating your feelings, but I am long past that; even though Boris says that we are not the most rational people in the world and we do crazy things often, it’s a different kind of craziness 🙂
Actually, the thing I am most thankful for this year is how our relationships reached a new level and how we learned to appreciate each other – even more than before.
Understanding Our History
I am reading Ann Appelbaum’s Gulag, and it will be a while until I finish it, but I can tell even now that this is an amazing work that stands out among all other books I read on that subject. However, I am not going to write about this book today. This blog is about something else.
***
When I was a teenager, I thought I knew enough about the “unspeakable” part of the history of the USSR. Having almost all of my family suffered different forms of oppression starting from the 1930s and ongoing, I was more knowledgeable than most of my peers, even among the Leningrad intelligentsia. It turned out that I knew close to nothing.
For example, I didn’t know anything about Holodomor. Yes, they didn’t teach about it at school, but neither did they teach us about labor camps. My relatives and my friends’ relatives told me about the arrests and interrogations, and I read real people’s diaries, which were never published. I nobody, nobody ever mentioned anything about kulaks1 being sent to the same camps!
Now I am asking myself why people of similar upbringing (Boris seconds my recollections) and I believed that “everything started” in 1936? Or at 1935 at the earliest?
Many books and movies present a picture like this: life is peaceful and beautiful, and that’s a nice and peaceful summer evening, and nobody expects anything, and all of a sudden, here is a “black raven,” and the father is getting arrested, and children are sent to the orphanage, and everybody’s life is ruined. Why?
There was no peaceful life, and everything was already wrong; why was it OK? Did they only care when the Great Terror started to grab people of their kind?
Why did none of my peers know that orphans were sent to the concentration camp, that kulak’s families were sent to the camps? Why did their relatives never tell them? Is it that they “didn’t know” about that before they were arrested, and then these tiny facts became “less important” when measured against their own misfortunes?
Maybe some of them didn’t know. But not all of them.
My grandfather was always portrayed as an “honest Chekist2” by my family members. Yet, his professional career started in the early 1920s when he was in Turkestan3, “fighting with Basmachi4.” That’s when he got his first stars. Did he not know? I doubt it.
Yesterday morning, I thought about what I believed I read in his file (the part of it which I own). I was frightened when I thought I didn’t remember where it was, but I finally found it.
The writing below is a draft of the “Characteristic” written by a famous Soviet movie producer, Ermler, as a testimony about my grandfather’s moral character.
That was a part of the rehabilitation effort, which resulted in acknowledging his innocence. Here is what “the master of Soviet propaganda” writes:
The resistance of our enemies was tremendous, and Chekists, like Dombrovsky, were on the front line of this struggle. They bravely fought with our enemies, smashed them, and built a new society.
My conversations with Dombrovsky were of great help to me since he often gave me good advice and helped me to correct my course. For example, I produced my movie “The Farmers” under his influence. He was very insistent in his demands to produce a film about the struggle with kulaks. He explained to me that this was one of the most important issues and that revealing the animal nature of kulaks to the public.
So he knew. And moreover, he was a part of it.
***
In the middle of the 1990s, when new parts of this forbidden history started to emerge here and there, my grandfather’s name started to appear in the press more and more often, mostly, however, in connection with my grandmother, who was a subject of many pieces of avantgarde poetry in the late 20s- early 30s. I remember one article (the whole newspaper page) in which the author speculated that since my grandfather was jealous because of this massive amount of love poetry and because he was a Chekist, it was he who ordered all these poets to be arrested. I told it back then, and I am repeating it now: this was 100% not true, and nobody who knew what the actual relationships between these people would ever think of any of that.
I asked my father why he didn’t protest. Why didn’t he write anything in response (in those days, objections were taken seriously.) I asked him why he would let this disgrace keep going. He replied: “You know, everybody had blood on their hands. Some up to the wrists, and some up to the elbows, that’s the only difference.” I hated his reply. I thought that he just didn’t want to get into the fight and backed out. And I promptly forgot about this conversation (as a coping mechanism.)
I recalled it recently. My father was a horrible person, and there are many things he has done that I will never forgive him. However, he was brutally honest about the past. He had no admiration for Solzhenitsyn, and he knew more about his father than he ever told me. I know that in the mid-50s, he was allowed to see his father’s file in the archive. He was not allowed to make copies or take notes, but he saw it. And he never told me anything about what he saw.
***
From multiple conversations with my greataunt, I have a pretty good idea about what people thought back then. They believed one can “bring happiness on the tips of bayonnets.” Still, I can’t understand why they were so ignorant.
My ignorance, multiplied by the ignorance of the previous generations, made the current state of Russia possible. Not only mine, but many of “us.” What’s done can’t be undone, but it’s important to acknowledge what was done. The only way to ensure this will never happen again is to understand precisely how it happened.
1 – Farmers who refused to join collective farms or were a little bit better off than others
2– A person who served in the “CheKa – “Extraordinary Commission”, the secret police.
3 – The Middle Asia Region established in the mid-19th century as a part of Russian Empie (link here).
4– The anti-Russian resistant movement in Turkestan (link here)
Are We Different? And To What Extent?
Recently, somebody asked me whether it is true that life in the US has “nothing in common” with life in Europe, regardless of the country. I generally agree with that, although one can say that all countries are unique. But I still stand with the statement that the first time you come to the US, especially if you do not come as a tourist, the “differenceness” strikes!
The differences are very pronounced in virtually all areas of life, but today, I wanted to talk about just one aspect, which was touched upon in the blog post that triggered the original question (is it too long a chain of references :)?)
That initial blog post described philanthropy, volunteering, and charity in general in the US and how people of different walks of life, not necessarily extremely well off, give their time and money, establish trusts, fund medical research, etc. That always prompts admiration and excitement in my European friends, who tell me there are not that many volunteering opportunities in their countries.
Although I also admire my fellow citizens’ drive for volunteering and giving in general, I often think that, at least in part, it is a natural reaction to the lack of governmental support for many causes. For example, when I am in Finland, I see practically no unhoused people on the streets. I know that that’s not because they are being arrested but because the Finnish government takes appropriate measures to ensure people do not end up on the streets.
I do not even want to start talking about healthcare; I wrote enough about it. But the situation here is similar: clinics do not need to establish special funds for treating uninsured people because uninsured people do not exist.
Let’s look at the situation with refugees. And I do not even talk about the current crisis; let’s look at how things were a year ago, with the war in Ukraine in full swing and with refugees from other war zones trying to get to safer places. In the US, the situation with accepting refugees and asylum seekers is unimaginably bad (see my post here). The asylum seekers are not allowed to work; at the same time, their cases are being postponed in court for months and years. None of them would survive if they would follow the letter of the law.
At the same time, there are multiple volunteering organizations that have over a hundred years of history of helping the asylum seeker. These organizations provide basic benefits, enroll people in community college classes, and help with housing. We, as a country, have enough resources, and I am wondering why we can’t direct them where they are needed, why there is no straight path for the asylum seekers, why they are not allowed to work – and many other “whys.”
During his speech on Veteran’s Day, President Biden said: “We are the only nation in the world built on ideas, not on the territory.” I do not think that this statement is entirely accurate, but I agree with the idea: people have been coming to the US because they have certain values and ideas on how things should work. And this has both good and bad consequences.
I love this country dearly, but there are many things I wish I could fix. I am not sure they are fixable, though, and I am sure there will be more things to fix after that :).
Happiness
I am still thinking about feeling happy. The book “Happiness Falls” gave an extra boost to these thoughts, but regardless of the book, I think about it quite often.
Today, I was working on a problem I’ve been working on for the past several days (whenever I was not involved in putting up fires). At some point, I moved my gaze away from the screen, looked in the direction of the window, and thought: how lucky I am! How fortunate I am! I know it seems like an improbable thought in the middle of an intense workday, but the feeling was very pronounced. I am sitting at my desk in a beautiful office, surrounded by smart people, doing the job I passionately love, making good money, and doing tons of other things I enjoy doing. Even with Anna’s knee injury and my mom’s ongoing situation, nobody has any life-threatening diseases.
I don’t know whom to thank, but I do not think I will ever take everything I have for granted. Feeling grateful makes me an even happier person. Also, it’s a constant reminder about how many people are less fortunate than I am.
I had a thought recently. I know that there are people who want homeless persons “out of sight – out of mind.” They do not want to be disturbed by unpleasant pictures, and I sort of understand what’s going on in their minds. I thought there were even more disparities one hundred and fifty years ago. And I am wondering, how did rich people feel walking down State Street and seeing all these disparities worse than nowadays? How could they be happy?…
What I Liked About My Night Out
Same as my last weekend, I liked that I didn’t have to rush through the evening. My workdays are such that I am completely focused on what I am doing, and I often need to literally solve several problems in parallel. I love the excitement of chasing the problem and fixing it, and I also like these intense sessions of design when you go through several solutions, try one, go through code building, find design flaws, discard and start over. However, this leaves you completely drained even if you do not work long hours.
I like to fit a lot in my day, but it also takes an ingenuity to take a day (or night) as it goes, having an agenda, but not necessarily a timeline.
The last weekend was good, and the week that followed was also good, but now I am facing a challenge of making it through the rest of the year without a crisis.
Hettie's Reflections 