Moments of happiness: 5 personal stories

1987 Military garrison, the city of Rzhev. I’m nine years old. Late summer evening. In the afternoon, our family: me, my older sister, mom and dad – returned from a trip to the sea – interesting, pleasant, but very, very long, such that even the smell of our apartment seemed unusual for the first few minutes. We were sorting things out, and now we sat down to drink tea, and at that moment the doorbell rang. Mom goes to open it, then I hear the voices of my friends: “Will Ira come out?” “Yes, later, for a little while.” Then the stomp of a large number of feet up the stairs, and my mother with the question: “Are you tired or will you go for a walk?” And my head is already spinning with anticipation of this happiness: friends, the remaining few days of vacation with them, all the time on the street in this huge tiny, 37-house military garrison, which is all ours! With all the groves, the river, vegetable gardens and shooting ranges. And I understand that all the days at sea I was waiting for just this. I was even ready to trade this sea for our most boring game for rainy weather: list everyone who lives in your house, in each of the five entrances from the first to the fifth floor – we did this a thousand times and knew everyone by name and surname. And now, finally, I am truly happy, because I am at home!

Oleg Anofriev, actor

I’m going on a date. Sad, unhappy… why? Yes, because the girl I met in the Crimea offered to meet me in Moscow, but she doesn’t have a phone, so she gave the phone to some friend. I called my friend, my friend called my girlfriend, and we made an appointment on Moskvin Street, next to the Art Theatre. So here I stand and wait, a little excited, to be honest, not very pleased. Suddenly I see that two girls are walking instead of one. One of them is the one I dated, and the other, apparently, the one who gave her phone number. I wonder what kind of person this is. Approaching… Oh! Ltd!!! It seems that I don’t need any more of my girlfriend. I am gone. What a beauty, what an adorable baby. “What is your name?” I asked. “Natasha,” she answered so harshly. At that moment I felt that the angels were singing in heaven, that a great symphony of love played in my heart, and since then for me this very meeting with my future wife has been one of the brightest moments in my life.

Valery Syutkin, singer

“Happiness is pleasure without remorse,” I read from Leo Tolstoy. And that’s exactly what my story is about. In fact, I have been happy all the time in recent years, because I have been doing what I love for a long time, I live with my beloved woman and I have close friends around me. And so far, pah-pah-pah, health does not distract me from this. But this moment still worries me. I am in the city of Kharkov, on the central square. Someone told me, but I did not check that this is the largest square in Europe. This is 1993, and in the summer we came with the Bravo group to play here at some big holiday. The entrance to the square was free. I was told that there were under half a million people there. The end is not in sight. I go out and want to say hello to the audience. But the microphone shocks me. By the lips. Not so much painful as unexpected. And I say a swear word very loudly … And twenty minutes of applause. And I liked it. I was absolutely happy as an artist. Complete unity with the people.

Daria Yekamasova, actress

1999, I’m going to the metro from a music school with a cold, having received a “count” in solfeggio and a warning about expulsion … An old grandfather sits opposite and smiles with sad eyes, then he takes out a photo album and shows me a photograph of a woman from afar. Then he takes out some kind of scarf and begins to cry with children’s tears. I look at him and become happy, and I also want to cry. Because at that moment I realized that true love exists, and this is the most important thing. And one more story. I’m flying to Kaliningrad, and on the very takeoff, a friend called me and said that my bank had collapsed. I had a fever and cramped my leg. This bank is my whole life. At some point, fear became so strong that I again felt that feeling of happiness and exaltation that came to me in childhood in anticipation of the New Year. I realized that it is such happiness that there is an opportunity to get such an experience and start all over again! I was upset only when I went down to earth and this information turned out to be false. But my life is still divided into before and after …

Viktor Sukhorukov, actor

End of summer. I am a gardener. I love and advise you to love a garden, a kitchen garden, parks, to love greenhouses, botanical gardens, it is very calming, harmonizing, cleansing a person from the inside. Saves me a lot. There is a time to scatter stones, there is a time to collect. So, my garden helps me to collect these pebbles for the whole season. The end of summer, apples are already hanging. We have a great harvest. It takes place in the suburbs. And I have an old, dying apple tree. But I tell my sister Galya: “Galya, we won’t cut down anything anymore, let them, these apple trees, die on their own: branch, leaf, crust, straight centimeter – let them go back to where they came from.” And suddenly I see – an old branch somehow stretched out from a dying tree and “climbed” somewhere on the gazebo, confused the drainpipe … I tell her: “Well, where did you climb, you fool? Well, what are you missing there? No, to the right, to the left … no, I climbed into the gazebo, I’ll cut you down to hell! … You won’t believe it, at the end of the summer beautiful, bulk apples hung on it! I even have pictures! I started taking pictures of these branches because there were a huge number of apples hanging on them! But even this was not happiness, and happiness lies in the fact that I suddenly shout: “Galya! Go here!” She was so frightened, and I stand with a camera on a stepladder and take pictures. Next to the apples, the branches are covered with flowers. That’s all. So, happiness is something that borders on a miracle. But with a miracle – not with a monster, horror and fear and misfortune, but with something very, very divine. Joyful, bordering on renewal. Birth, damn it! So, if some deadly bastard suddenly looks at you with living eyes, the eyes of something new, being born or nascent and very encouraging, maybe this is happiness.