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Polina Shumitskaya is a reporter on Onliner.by. Won a contest for the best text and flew to Paris to meet the journalists of Le Monde and Agence France-Presse. Once again after her visit to Paris, she comes back with an interesting anthropological discovery: the French know how to enjoy life, and we, the Belarusians, do not do it.
In general, it is difficult to write about pleasure. Rude voices of "good" Soviet hardening immediately appear in my head: "Shame!", "Parasitism!", "The growth of youth! In our culture, pleasure is deeply and surely blocked by shame, guilt and fear. Indeed, it was not enough that people appreciate life! The installation of "suffer, endure, stick" instead of "enjoy, enjoy, indulge in doing nothing" manifests itself in everything. In addition, patience and surpbading are presented as obvious virtues, a brilliant ideal that everyone should aspire to.
Even in the language of the concept of "doing nothing" with a positive connotation almost does not exist. Open thesaurus: sit down, catch flies, relax, calm down, be lazy, count crows, beat buckets, spit on ceiling, pear around, philonin … Language shows how much we are ashamed and accused of "parasites" who are in fear sitting in the room and expect a strict mother to come and punish for lessons that have not been done. It turns out that guilt before pleasure is a sign of insufficient maturity, infantilism. We are still waiting for the "parents" permission to enjoy life.
We do not understand the value of inaction. We do not allow ourselves to rest. At the head of the world order is an old, like the world, trying to do a foolish but incessant job. Even if your name is not Stakhanov, you still remember that the five-year plan must be established at three years. Only we, in my opinion, are possible these strange messages, in which you have to sort the paper exactly until 18:00. Why is this meaningless "service of guilt" six? No, do not ask strange questions. "Abi rabochy!"
Belarusians are still at work: at the office, at home, at the dacha, at dinner with friends. They write, call, telegraph, send faxes, conclude contracts, calculate the cost price, tweet, post, dig, sow, post. If you do not go through peas with beans, you will be doomed. But in this perpetually anxious job, the little things that give us pleasure are missing.
When I am told that the ability to enjoy is directly proportional to the country's annual GDP, I can not agree with that. After all, the most important thing is the ability to enjoy everyday life, simple things, little things. Is it freshly prepared bedding, clean and crisp, favorite music in the car, a sweet, linden smell reminiscent of childhood, or a sentimental conversation with a friend who is worth a lot of money? Or here are such "nonsense and nonsense" always present: it is good to serve breakfast, to kiss the children on the front, to disbademble envelopes with old black and white photos of young parents …
No, the average Bedarian N details A typical Belarusian man Z in the juice himself states: "I tried to do nothing on weekends, but, frankly, I'm not not satisfied with me: two whole days in the air! So much work could be done! "
And even on vacation we do not allow ourselves to rest. Imagine this picture. Belarussian tourists cross the border and meet up in Paris. They got up at five in the morning not to be late for the flight, but settled at the hotel at three o'clock in the afternoon. Tired, they want to sleep and regain strength. But no, what is it, forget your desires and needs – suffer and suffer, guys, Paris at your feet. In the street, there is +30, and in the Louvre, which melts under the sun, there are endless rows of tourists. Around the corner are hundreds of restaurants with tables on the street and fresh wine in chilled glbades. An endless line in the heat and the Louvre, which you can not really see in a day, but "must", or a slow drink of the young Côtes-du-Rhône? You understand, yes. Heat. The waiting line Galop in the rooms of the Louvre.
The French do not commit such violence against themselves in the name of the "must". At least the Parisians. It seems that their main occupation is to sit at a table in the street, on the terrace of a cafe and slowly drink a cup of coffee or a glbad of wine, examining how a half of Paris miss the second. They understood the wisdom of centuries: rest is an integral part of life, a cycle of the cycle "tension – relaxation – tension".
If a Parisian drinks beer, then certainly white, with a lemon. And for a snack, he has olives. If there is a picnic, then in the center of town, under the noise and buzz of cars, on a carefully manicured lawn between the Palais des Handicapés, the Air France office, the Ministry. Foreign Affairs and the Golden Bridge of Alexander III. Because the buzz!
… The Trocadero square is bathed in sunshine, the street is noisy by the voices of Parisians and tourists, chatting around the tables with animation, I'm sitting at Malakoff and groups of Japanese go beyond me. I am not in a hurry. It's good for me. At the opposite table, there is a Frenchwoman with a big cute and shaggy dog. The waiter brought him a bowl of water. The dog happily sprinkles cold water around him, then licks the mistress with a big, rough tongue. She bursts out laughing. All this is observed by another casual witness, the average French G. We look at each other – and we start laughing too. It's just that the dog is so shaggy and kind, because they love a mistress, because life is beautiful!
Is it possible to laugh with a stranger on the terrace of the Belarusian brewery? Perhaps, this question is closed to the point with the appearance of the dog in the restaurant, because in Minsk "not Palozhan."
And the ability to enjoy is necessarily related to a different polarity – the ability to openly experience heavy feelings. I walked along a shaded street along the Seine and saw a French woman who was riding a bike and … was crying bitterly. Yes, yes, with a breeze that rushes down the wide boulevard and does not hide his tears. There was a lot of sincerity in all this. It's hard for me to imagine a Belarussian woman in such a situation because we usually keep a face at all costs. But the board eventually becomes too high: with a voluntary endurance, the total absence of fireworks of joy also happens.
I emphasize: my column is not that we are worse. Not once. But the reality is really this: the option "to have fun" is not integrated into the psyche of the average Belarusian. So you have to learn, tune antennas, train the brain to appreciate and look for the good in your life. It's just through strength and resistance to organize a daily time of doing nothing. Slowly drink a cup of tea in the morning and watch at dawn. Close the social network and go stomp on the barefoot grbad. It's hard, of course, but we do not get used to difficulties, right?
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