Happy Life with a Russian Wife

Posted By admin on December 6, 2009

Here I’d like to share my observations about one letter I’ve got.

A short prehistory. A reader of an online newspapers, which I had edited, sent me an article and proposed a plan of cooperation. And then crossed it all out, responding really ugly at one of the publications. And then I got this:

“No, I do not read blogs, I do not like this activity at all, what’s the point – to write a diary for everyone’s display? Also, I have not seen any interesting blogs yet. At your invitation, I looked once at your blog, but failed to enter an answer or a comment, how it is called. But really, it is a stupid idea to read someone else’s diary and comment on it. Frankly, I do not want to waste my time on such nonsense. I did not get letters from you about the competition, but anyway it’s all over…

Here’s one funny situation out of my life. I had a very wealthy client, who became my regular customer. When she found out that my daughters’ names were Anastasia and Xenia, she opened her eyes wide and asked, “What, you have given them RUSSIAN NAMES?” I responded, “And how should I have called them, in Jewish?” She did not know what to say. ” But we are not afraid of the word “Russian” in the sense of nationality. And for them, a Jew is terrible word, do not dare say that you are a Jew. It is necessary to think why they have such an attitude to their nationality. Phobia it is…”

To tell the truth, at first I just wanted to throw her message away: the lady had gone too far, something in her life went REALLY wrong and she was trying to work off her pain on others, that was obvious. Everybody was to blame in her life: the Jews (by the way, she did not even realize in her noble wrath that Xenia was not a Russian name), my partner, who had banned her for abuse, and the author of the unwanted publication … Somehow, she approached me more gently, explaining that it was not me who had made the decision to ban her….

After all, I decided to publish it because I had thought it was a good example of mirroring. That’s how we react to our grieves and wounds by blaming the whole world around us. By labeling everything tightly. By building a cage for ourselves. And roaring from the corner at every passer-by without even realizing that the passer-by is free and, unlike us, it is s/he who chooses the direction of motion.

I am sincerely sorry for her, because she loses a lot. For example, she surely lost opportunities to promote her services through the newspaper and my blog. I think that this was not the first nor the only case. It is a shame.

By the way, her name is Nadezhda, which means “hope” in Russian. The hope that I feel sorry for … Hmm ….

Categories: No category
Tags: blaming, feeling sorry for somebody, lost opportunities, Mirroring, Why do people hate me?