Misplaced

Though loneliness is something we were born with, it’s no joke to experience it stronger as years go by. Leo Tolstoy once said that after a certain age death is the only real thing a man can think about. We get ourselves happily occupied with everything we can, but as time goes by it gets harder and harder to do so.
 It feels as if I slip under the water where everything happening above the surface doesn’t matter much. I’m sitting under this calm water, listening to burbling and dim sounds realizing that I’m not that interested in diving out.


I was wondering about Nabokov. Given his encyclopaedic knowledge of merely everything and brilliant fluency in English, he had never given up on translating his works into Russian. He had this urge to convey everything into Russian himself not trusting any other translator (and why would he, indeed).

I’m wondering, why is that after living few years abroad we start reaching out for the foreign language? Is this a great power of habit, do we get lazy to constantly refresh our native language database? Or is it that the new language gives us some new way of thinking?
Linguists and neuroscientists would certainly know more about this phenomenon yet it keeps me wondering.

 I don’t even want to translate this into Russian. I’m contemplating whether the whole Russian language struggle is simply a part of a bigger struggle. Namely the restructuring of the values catalogue. Coming from the Slavic culture, or geographically speaking, Easter European landscapes, I carry a baggage. Naturally I put it down and took a closer look at it, as it was getting heavy. I went through it and decided that some changes are needed.
Firstly I decided that it’s okay to express that you are happy in public. The general interface here is uplifted, it’s smiley and if you’re feeling good on this gloomy rainy morning, it’s okay, nobody will frown upon you.

We’re all the same after all. Yet we all put the light-hearted façade because we don’t want to impose this on anyone else.



The paradox is that people are not keen on exposing this genuine willingness and helpfulness as a general interface. It weirds people out . The personal freedom and one’s very independent and selfish pursue of happiness are so important. Yet, this leaves us alone with endless freedom of any obligations.