To illustrate the subject below is a story of a man I used to ride with
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“Can I survive in Ukraine?.. Can I survive in Ukraine?”, a mature man kept asking the emptiness of the room, his voice exhausted with hard drinking and smoking, while he was getting up from his bed at 2 p. m. By the moment described all he had been doing was sleeping, going to work, drinking much beer and vodka and smoking rather strong cigarettes.
Aron Abraham Sand had come to Odessa from Sunnywale, CA, with rather noble intentions. His heart was keeping a strong desire to become a minister in a Protestant church and find a Ukrainian believing lady and marry her. Aron had a visa for five years of being Ukrainian resident, but when bored with American lifestyle – so simple it felt – his first idea was to stay in our country for much longer.
One could hardly say that a man with 40,000 USD on his bank account had to get over something. Actually the obstacles to get over were not material, quite different ones.
I would be the last person to say negative things about a personality, but I could not help seeing the man smoke and drink beer, while telling about his highest intentions. In fact he understood that getting the things desired made him change. The worst detail was that the matter had never gone further than understanding.
Alas, there are no finances to cover poor thinking. With bank resource greater than that of any Ukrainian, with work as a teacher and salary greater than any Ukrainian teacher has, the man painted himself poorer than a local pauper might be. His key phrase “I need money to pay my bills” sounded quite often in our conversations.
The saddest thing was that the man wanted to change in his words, but no steps were taken. He made friends with people who drank with no particular reason, with hopeless smokers. He had never said “I will give up drinking and smoking for sure”. He said “If I give up…” instead. There was no slightest idea when the day of the great miracle was about to come. It looked like Aron was waiting for the day when Holly God would gift him a day on which he would never be eager to drink or smoke.
I guess he spent his last months in Odesa and every time I left his flat (as friends, we saw each other often) he gave me all his empty and unfinished bottles, half-emptied cigarette boxes and asked me to leave all of this by a litter collector for a vagabond to pick them up. It looked like a hope of deliverance, but every next day brought a sad picture. There were more empty bottles and cigarettes smoked than last night. The host would lie in his soft chair, senselessly staring at the opposite wall, finishing his 191st cigarette a day, drinking beer and mixing it with endless cough coming deeply from his chest. In intervals between all these processes he said in a hoarse full of depression. “Igor, teaching is getting harder. They take my hours away in the school. And I am tired of being lonely. I don’t think I can survive in this country. I don’t even think I can pay my bills…” Well, the speech sounded beautiful, but could it have ever assured someone, when his chair stood on an island in the sea of bottles, empty, half-filled, full ones?
No wonder, that the school he was working for started to slowly relieve him from the hours of teaching. Perhaps he was sober when at work, but even then his smoking and beering life-style out of work revealed itself. Beer is the thing to push you into depression, which comes with no particular reason, the theory was checked by myself after drinking beer with pals. With cigarettes beer forms a sweet duet strong enough to eat brain or at least free it from any kind of constructive thinking. It’s a plus to illogical and non-adequate state of mind and a minus to being industrious.
OK, lets paint it simpler. Imagine yourself as a foreign language student, you pay a good deal of money every month and while answering at the lesson, you discover, you are not heard by your teacher, since the latter is buried deeply in the thickness of his own sad thoughts. You are growing more and more aware of how many mistakes you’re making in your speech and never hear corrections come from your teacher. Dear reader, I guess you have common sense, you value the money you are investing into yourself and if so, I am more than sure that stimulated with the mighty anger, you will run to the course administrator to explain them this is not the attitude you are paying for. After all you might study the language for free, having your boot as a teacher. The result seems to be the one as after cooperating with this Mr. Teacher.
So here is the double-edged weapon: he drinks, because he feels hard and he feels hard because he never quits drinking.
Instead of working for someone else he was offered different business ideas by me and some of our pals. He was a patient listener, but it took him really long to start any practice.
It was May 2007, when I was off to Crimea for an Esperanto festival, and Aron was calling me to promise he would leave to the US before I came back home. His drunk hoarse and time of calling surely told me he had got ****** again (when I say “******” I mean the English sense of the word). But still within a week after my coming back to Odesa he visited a tour agent and bought all the air-tickets necessary to reach Washington, DC. Since then he had missed all his working shifts, skipping to give any alert to the school. By this he ran the risk of staying without salary and home both: the school kept him as an employee and a tenant both. But if you saw the enormous number of bottles and boxes you would understand he wouldn’t freaking care about these problems. From that moment on he ceased to consider God’s will for him to be in the Ukrainian Protestant Ministry. Aron did freaking run away from our country, having left all the luggage he had brought for his friends in Ukraine to keep.
Many of us plant beautiful dreams. But not so many venture actions to get the dreams materialized. On my word, I could never get, how a constantly drinking and smoking man wanted to take possession of believing lady’s heart. Moreover an American, who works for a Ukrainian employer, is not the one looked by Ukrainian ladies abroad.
I would never approve anyone burying their dream. All-life mourn is the payment for this. But you, who has the dream, move on and on to get it, unless you want to be moved by the dreamers, who are already on their way to fulfill theirs. If your dream isn’t reality yet, well you have got to change yourself, you might have changed more than once, before your dream becomes your true life!
----------------------------------------
The story might reveal my attitude to drinking and smoking and doing sport at the same time. What is yours?
-----------------------------------------
“Can I survive in Ukraine?.. Can I survive in Ukraine?”, a mature man kept asking the emptiness of the room, his voice exhausted with hard drinking and smoking, while he was getting up from his bed at 2 p. m. By the moment described all he had been doing was sleeping, going to work, drinking much beer and vodka and smoking rather strong cigarettes.
Aron Abraham Sand had come to Odessa from Sunnywale, CA, with rather noble intentions. His heart was keeping a strong desire to become a minister in a Protestant church and find a Ukrainian believing lady and marry her. Aron had a visa for five years of being Ukrainian resident, but when bored with American lifestyle – so simple it felt – his first idea was to stay in our country for much longer.
One could hardly say that a man with 40,000 USD on his bank account had to get over something. Actually the obstacles to get over were not material, quite different ones.
I would be the last person to say negative things about a personality, but I could not help seeing the man smoke and drink beer, while telling about his highest intentions. In fact he understood that getting the things desired made him change. The worst detail was that the matter had never gone further than understanding.
Alas, there are no finances to cover poor thinking. With bank resource greater than that of any Ukrainian, with work as a teacher and salary greater than any Ukrainian teacher has, the man painted himself poorer than a local pauper might be. His key phrase “I need money to pay my bills” sounded quite often in our conversations.
The saddest thing was that the man wanted to change in his words, but no steps were taken. He made friends with people who drank with no particular reason, with hopeless smokers. He had never said “I will give up drinking and smoking for sure”. He said “If I give up…” instead. There was no slightest idea when the day of the great miracle was about to come. It looked like Aron was waiting for the day when Holly God would gift him a day on which he would never be eager to drink or smoke.
I guess he spent his last months in Odesa and every time I left his flat (as friends, we saw each other often) he gave me all his empty and unfinished bottles, half-emptied cigarette boxes and asked me to leave all of this by a litter collector for a vagabond to pick them up. It looked like a hope of deliverance, but every next day brought a sad picture. There were more empty bottles and cigarettes smoked than last night. The host would lie in his soft chair, senselessly staring at the opposite wall, finishing his 191st cigarette a day, drinking beer and mixing it with endless cough coming deeply from his chest. In intervals between all these processes he said in a hoarse full of depression. “Igor, teaching is getting harder. They take my hours away in the school. And I am tired of being lonely. I don’t think I can survive in this country. I don’t even think I can pay my bills…” Well, the speech sounded beautiful, but could it have ever assured someone, when his chair stood on an island in the sea of bottles, empty, half-filled, full ones?
No wonder, that the school he was working for started to slowly relieve him from the hours of teaching. Perhaps he was sober when at work, but even then his smoking and beering life-style out of work revealed itself. Beer is the thing to push you into depression, which comes with no particular reason, the theory was checked by myself after drinking beer with pals. With cigarettes beer forms a sweet duet strong enough to eat brain or at least free it from any kind of constructive thinking. It’s a plus to illogical and non-adequate state of mind and a minus to being industrious.
OK, lets paint it simpler. Imagine yourself as a foreign language student, you pay a good deal of money every month and while answering at the lesson, you discover, you are not heard by your teacher, since the latter is buried deeply in the thickness of his own sad thoughts. You are growing more and more aware of how many mistakes you’re making in your speech and never hear corrections come from your teacher. Dear reader, I guess you have common sense, you value the money you are investing into yourself and if so, I am more than sure that stimulated with the mighty anger, you will run to the course administrator to explain them this is not the attitude you are paying for. After all you might study the language for free, having your boot as a teacher. The result seems to be the one as after cooperating with this Mr. Teacher.
So here is the double-edged weapon: he drinks, because he feels hard and he feels hard because he never quits drinking.
Instead of working for someone else he was offered different business ideas by me and some of our pals. He was a patient listener, but it took him really long to start any practice.
It was May 2007, when I was off to Crimea for an Esperanto festival, and Aron was calling me to promise he would leave to the US before I came back home. His drunk hoarse and time of calling surely told me he had got ****** again (when I say “******” I mean the English sense of the word). But still within a week after my coming back to Odesa he visited a tour agent and bought all the air-tickets necessary to reach Washington, DC. Since then he had missed all his working shifts, skipping to give any alert to the school. By this he ran the risk of staying without salary and home both: the school kept him as an employee and a tenant both. But if you saw the enormous number of bottles and boxes you would understand he wouldn’t freaking care about these problems. From that moment on he ceased to consider God’s will for him to be in the Ukrainian Protestant Ministry. Aron did freaking run away from our country, having left all the luggage he had brought for his friends in Ukraine to keep.
Many of us plant beautiful dreams. But not so many venture actions to get the dreams materialized. On my word, I could never get, how a constantly drinking and smoking man wanted to take possession of believing lady’s heart. Moreover an American, who works for a Ukrainian employer, is not the one looked by Ukrainian ladies abroad.
I would never approve anyone burying their dream. All-life mourn is the payment for this. But you, who has the dream, move on and on to get it, unless you want to be moved by the dreamers, who are already on their way to fulfill theirs. If your dream isn’t reality yet, well you have got to change yourself, you might have changed more than once, before your dream becomes your true life!
----------------------------------------
The story might reveal my attitude to drinking and smoking and doing sport at the same time. What is yours?
