Three Words

I am nothing close to a writer. It’s just, you know… it happens that life throws you upon something, whether weird and startling you by its unexpectedness or ordinary that you pass by every day but too busy to take notice of, - doesn’t matter, - and this something gives a tremendous shake to what’s been nagging at the back of your consciousness, pulls to the surface what has been roaming about your insides, what you always felt was of vital importance, but what you have never before now been able to express.

For me it was a question I bumped into recently, and I am going to ask this question out, even knowing that at the first sight it might sound not much different from all those meaningless broad generalizations about everything but nothing, applying to everyone but in fact nobody, focused on something seemingly significant but in their essence empty, - of that you-are-what-you-want-to-be or live-for-today-only nature and that there are many more issues worth spending time and mental abilities pondering than such ones. All true, but, please, take a minute, just one minute, read this and first try to answer it for yourself before you keep on reading, - what are the three words you most want to teach your children?

I am Russian. These are mine. They are the ones rooted deep within my mind, my heart, running through veins in a powerful flow, defining my whole life, unobtrusively but faithfully accompanying me through "the good, the bad and the crazy" I meet on the way, filling me with Pride of my country and of my ancestors, making believe in the Goodness that will necessarily rein. 
I don't know how they manage to influence my being so strongly, I truly don't. I don't spend days on end digging out or making up inspiring mottos to spark off my patriotic feelings, I never hang about places running lengthy and detailed discussions on this, neither do I march with banners trying to demonstrate or prove something to the world, no, nothing of the kind. I hardly ever even say these words aloud, unless directly asked about my nationality, and it is the first time in my life I am putting anything like this in writing. 
I don't dare to call myself "a patriot". This word has been so wildly abused and exploited in all kinds of contexts, so much blood has been poured out, so many innocent lives lost, so many ugly deeds done under its cover, that I am just... afraid of it.

For me it is about simple things. 

About reading Russian fairy-tales with your son and feeling how their naive sincerity soothes and breeds serenity.

About coming to your native places and getting drunk with the feeling of freedom, knowing that it is the only spot on Earth where everything is “more”, the sea smell is stronger, the hills are bushier, the fogs are more mysterious, even sea gulls are louder, and realizing that our grandfathers felt the same, absolutely the same, laying down but not giving a centimeter of their land away to the enemy, for the name of the freedom and us, their grandchildren.

About that saturated mixture of pain, reverence and dignity every time you pass by the Siege monuments near Saint-Petersburg or seeing plates on old buildings in the centre of the city warning about shelling.
It has brought up... I remember myself, a little girl, listening to the radio in our tiny, but so very cozy Khrushchevka kitchen. They had been broadcasting stories at the time and that evening there was a story about a man, our contemporary, calling someone on the phone and somehow, by some miracle, getting at a young girl from the past, a girl from the besieged Leningrad, very first months of it. It's been twenty-five years now but I still can hear her voice when she said “So, two more years…” She added nothing, didn’t cry, didn’t weep or lament, but those simple words containing such untold grief, such suffering and anguish seemed to send some strangely powerful message right into my heart making it bleed.

About watching "Devchata" for the hundredth time and for the hundredth time feeling all wrapped up by some unbelievably light atmosphere of purity, dipping into the world of somewhat naive in their honesty and openheartedness people, plain but so morally stable, living for simple but full of eternal importance things.

And through it all I understand that what has changed over the course of time is the form only. Surroundings. We've got placed into a different picture, is all, but the essence, our souls, our thoughts are still the same. We do not snatch others’ territories, we do not care about getting Supreme-Nation-of-the-World/Cosmos/Universe/whatever awards, we do not shake fists at everybody’s faces “We are the coolest of the coolest, get it, you?” Nothing of the kind. We are all-sufficient. We are calm and perfectly aware of all our strengths. We neither need nor want to show off or to prove anything to anybody. We just want to live and to be happy, to venerate our cultural and historical heritage, to have children and build up our tomorrow the way we see it.

We just love our country. This love - it is something inborn, it gets accumulated in our blood over the course of time and passes down from parents to children, we absorb it with the very first drink of air we make coming to this world. And everything our country has to go through only adds to us developing utter and unswerving devotion to it, intensifies and deepens our feelings, but above all makes us more and more certain about one thing - we will always be there. With her - our Russia. With him – our President, respected, admired and unconditionally trusted, honest with his own people and the whole world, fair and wise, knowing perfectly well where he is going and leading us, what he is doing and what it all will result in, persistent, determined, fearless and straightforward when it comes to defending our rights and honour. They two are our Motherland.

All the misfortunes that befall her, all the arrows and bullets aimed at her heart, all the ropes and ties threatening to suffocate her, all the insults and ridiculous accusations thrown at her face, - we will stand it all. We will go through all the trials with our heads raised up high, our backs firm and our souls open, moved by one unifying idea, pulsating within, lighting up the way, like it has been from the beginning of times, - For the sake of Russia.
Never in our history has our will been enslaved, never have we allowed to be humiliated, treated disrespectfully or laughed at, never have been bent by force, malice or spiteful intentions. It has been so for many centuries, and so it will last for many others that are destined to come, and throughout all of them our children will pass these words down to theirs - I am Russian.

This is my Russia as I see it. Quiet dignity. Clear peaceful sky. Happy children. And this is what it will remain for always. We will take care of that. God willing...