Everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds. In any case, at some point we stop making endless claims to the universe, and – suddenly – we notice its beauty with all its imperfections.
The state of chronic discontent for many, alas, is the norm. They are offended by loved ones, compete with friends, their bosses annoy them. The most philosophically minded make claims to the Creator: the world is not organized correctly. The most proud are jealous of a genius and secretly sure that he is an impostor. Outwardly, this usually looks like a reaction to circumstances. Reasons and truth will always be found. But only people of a certain type are in constant discomfort and anxiety. Sometimes they feel sorry for them.
I remember a funny incident. At my friend’s birthday party, one guest, the amount of temperament and ambition in which drowned out the sense of self-preservation, asked to play chess with Mikhail Tal. There will always be a hunter to play a game with a grandmaster. The calculation, perhaps, was that Tal had already raised his glass to the hero of the day more than once. After about two minutes, the heated guest exclaimed, turning to the world champion who was falling asleep at the board: “Misha, I understand that you are a genius, but you can’t humiliate with coasters like that! Why did you give me two rooks in a row?” “Don’t be offended, dear,” Tal replied, “but you’ll checkmate in three moves.”
The moral of this story is simple: don’t try to beat a genius. He plays a different game, even if it’s called chess like yours. The defeat received from him has nothing to do with shame, pride, talent, or intelligence. It would be better not to sit down with a grandmaster at the same board.
But the genius in my conversation is just that, an example. It is still a question of a substance immeasurably higher.
Scolding the world order, we make exactly the same mistake: we sit down at the same board with the Creator. After all, if a person claims that something is done badly, it is implied that he knows how to do it well. In this case, he is trying, using our example, to teach God to play chess.
On the contrary, sometimes a childish thought comes to my mind: has God ever tried everything on himself? Otherwise, how did He know that this is exactly what is needed, that this is exactly what is needed? Once I realized that the condition for some intermediate, of course, successes and insights are losses.
On the unstudded and unpaved St. Petersburg ice, he fell and broke his arm. I realized at once that janitors are one of the most important and most humane professions in the world. For various reasons, performers work so-so, but these are our concerns. Janitors were invented by God.
He also invented surgeons. They immediately told me that it looks like a fracture, but an x-ray is needed.
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- philosophy of joy
For Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen, I experienced a separate tender feeling. Even if he was an unimportant family man, humanity, who is not familiar with his biography, forgives him everything in advance. Twenty-five articles are devoted to his discoveries in a concise encyclopedic dictionary. Nice epitaph.
How much closer, without any spiritual training, those close to me turned out to be! The bizarre demands of everyday life, as it turned out, are so diverse that without the help of relatives in my condition it was absolutely impossible to cope with them. Christian love is very useful here. I understood something.
I also realized that a person needs to have two hands. You don’t need three, you don’t. But even one is not enough. It was at this moment that a conjecture occurred to me: did God really try everything himself first? But then, in order to create the world, He first had to lose it!
My job is to write words. There is not much evidence to support the need for this work. But this is how I am arranged, or, rather, this is how everything is arranged for me.
Most of all domestic troubles, I experienced the inability to sit down at the typewriter. It was as if ants settled in the brain – it moved, itched, demanded to realize its hallucinations. But the hand did not move. Right. And the left to daydream with the help of the keys was awkward to the comic.
And suddenly (I could not predict this detective turn) the brain stopped worrying. He’s resigned, the scoundrel! No, no, he said, no, no. And fell asleep. Perhaps he simply knew that this was a temporary reprieve. But at that moment I discovered that in the body, as in nature in general, everything is connected with everything.
Now at least I understand something. Life is arranged reasonably, economically and at the same time generously. It would be good if we learned to understand this before we start wringing our hands and getting heart attacks. But, apparently, we have no other experience. Unless literature – a useless, in general, occupation – can somehow contribute to this.