Temporary difficulties

Such a tradition has already developed that as many years as I write for this publication, I always compose New Year's speakers. And, of course, each time it is increasingly difficult. What else can be grown in this trampled meadow? And where to get so much vigor of the spirit or at least vigorous intonations, which are necessary in accordance with the law of the genre?

This time with vigor is somehow especially tense. But what to do is tradition. Let's try as we can.

Whether a lively newspaper columnist, a sonorous voice of a television and radio-presenter, say: "We will summarize some results of the outgoing year." He sits in me, this annoying voice, seeking "results." Although, let's say, not so sonorous.

There are actually a lot of results. For my taste, they could have been smaller. Neskuchny was a year, which is already there.

But for some reason, it’s not what to say about these results, but I don’t want to think. Although try not to think here ... It still won't work.

This year there were more losses than acquisitions. But if we talk about acquisitions, many of us have acquired some important and some completely new, although unusually painful experience. The experience of recognizing people or phenomena by some previously unknown signs, the experience of demarcation, the experience of breaking the living of the usual and seemingly stable ties in the living. Including ties of causal.

This year gave some answers to some questions. The answers are instructive, although not too encouraging. But even more he asked completely new questions, from which you will not dismiss, no matter how much this would like.

The key word of recent times was the word "crisis". The word is unpleasant, paralyzing, like a bite of vipers.

But at the same time, many, especially people of creative professions, have long been well known that in conditions and, most importantly, the most incredible artistic or scientific ideas are sometimes born in a sense of crisis.

Once the Great Fellini fell into the most severe and protracted creative crisis. He shared his torment with a friend, also a filmmaker. “I can’t do anything at all,” the master complained. “It seems that in art it all ended for me.” “And you make a movie,” a friend advised contrary to logic. "What kind of movie! What should I shoot about? I said - a crisis!" - "Here's about your crisis and take off!"

They parted on that. But Fellini began to reflect on this strange advice. And then he still took up the movie. And he took off "eight and a half." About the crisis.

So, the crisis. And then who is comforted with what and whose heart calms down on. Someone, say, urgently, but "at old prices" buys two or three walking excavators and seven to eight lifting cranes for current household needs. Someone displaces himself from their own living space, filling it with bags with cereal, pasta and banks of canned corn. Someone tightly, as a lyrical hero of the poet Blok to a tavern stance, nails himself to the Internet, speaking every one and a half or two minutes to say, as a spell, a ringing Russian word ending in a “c”, so he pronounces this magic word frantically and gambling, as if all the difficult diagnostics of the spirit of time were exhausted by one. However, this is so - it is more or less and is exhausted.

I don’t know if this will sound comforting, but still I will say that the collective feeling of the “end of the time” is far from the first not only in the history of mankind, but even in my personal history. It has already been. And there will be more. And this experience convinces us that there is no end of time. There is only the end of one time and the onset of another. What - we do not know every time. But we know that this is another, the new time will come with its problems, with its estimates and reassessments, adversity and hopes, falls and infrages, with its tricky questions, to which you still have to look for answers.

From childhood, we are drawn by a pernicious habit of answering adult questions to answer childishly. And getting rid of children's superstitions and prejudices is necessary. Without this, we will never take a step forward. It is not necessary to fall into a saving, as it seems to many, childhood, especially when there is a need to answer one of two sacramental questions, namely, “who is to blame”, is not necessary. You should not always be sure that the same closet is personal responsibility for your bump on your forehead, about the corner of which you cracked with a run.

Who is to blame for our hardships, hardships, bruises, bitter tears? Closet? America? Parents? Difficult childhood? Who?

And the answer is one, although very unpleasant: we, we ourselves. Our frivolity, trusting, inaction, hope for something and on someone, the perception of social reality surrounding us as a climatic phenomenon, which is not in our power surrounding us are to blame. So do not look for the guilty.

When there is a need to answer the second question, that is, "what to do", again, one should not fall into childhood. Because so you will not come up with anything better than running to complain to mom. In the hope that she will now settle and arrange everything, and who should be approximately punished.

It is not necessary to fall into childhood, no. And from time to time to remember about him, about his own childhood, is not only necessary, but also heartbreaking. But it is the holiday of the New Year, due to its genre and stylistic features, is especially suitable for children's memories. About half -worn sensations, about resentment and gifts, about pictures, songs, books ...

By the way, about books. For example, I remember very well which book I first read it myself.

I knew how to read from five years, but for some reason I was lazy and preferred not to read, but to listen. And he tormented his mother, demanding that she read me out loud. "You yourself know how!" she said. But I began to beating, and my mother retreated. And I read books to me. One by one.

But once she was still tired of it, and she came up with a strong pedagogical technique. She read me the first chapter of the book and flatly refused to read further. I was weeded and fed and sat down to read myself. And I read it, this book, in two days. This book was "Robinson Crusoe", God knows how many times I read in a variety of periods of life.

An important book. The cherished, we can say. Not because it is better than others. But because the first. The first, read independently.

I still love this book. And, of course, I remember well. This book is not about how to survive alone, although, of course, about it too. I have never been ready for loneliness, and therefore did not want to assimilate these lessons. But this book is first of all about how not to give in despondency.

Remember how Robinson on one of his first days on a uninhabited island set up a wooden sign and cut the words “bad” and “good” on it with a knife? Under the word "bad" he wrote: "I am abandoned to a dull uninhabited island, and I have no hope of escape." And under the word "good": "But I survived, although I could drown." Well, and so on.

Dow its despondency is bad, yes. But, I admit, the word "hope" somehow ceased to like. It sometimes has inaction, to numbness, to paralysis of will. Hoping, of course, is necessary, without it in any way. But you still need to do something. Whoever knows what. And as he can. Nowhere to go: we must tirelessly move with your arms, legs, brains. Well, like Robinson, for example.

In general, we will live on. Well, Happy New Year, of course.