Sometimes life is like a quest where it’s impossible to guess at the first sight if you won or lost. Some victories resemble of the one that happened in the Asculum battle in 279 b.c., and defeats in some cases become a beginning of new and very successful enterprise, depending on correctly chosen strategy. The main thing is to keep a right to choose in any situation — our columnist, director of AVRORACLINIC Liana Davidyan resumes.
The sun shone down on an empty December beach. The air was full of the appeasement and tranquillity found only in an empty resort town in winter. A pair of older flushed joggers, a limping Spaniard accompanied by a dog and suddenly a noisy family with children trying to outrun their mother. Dignified birds strutted on the tables and the smell of strong coffee. That was exactly why I left cold, grey, damp, drizzly Moscow for a weekend. Of course, I also had a serious business reason for the trip and a plan on how to use the time.
Everything was surprisingly perfect. In a day and a half, I met everyone I had to meet, solved all urgent questions, bought presents for the New Year and finally checked in for the return flight scheduled for early next morning. For the moment I enjoyed idyllic weather and a delicious dinner in my favourite beach restaurant eating the tenderest artichokes washed down with white wine. I did the inner talking, patting myself for the idea to fly and change the picture and for the good choice of time and place as well. Four hours later I was laying in resuscitation, I was blood transfused and the only coherent thought in my head was ‘Man proposes, God disposes’.
Life has an amazing ability to remind of its value and frailty in the most sudden moments. It would had been weird if it warned us of the time and place of the joke and laughter at your plans. Sometimes it looks like it awaits on purpose giving a man an illusion of the free choice, to break it in tatters. I don’t want to be considered a fatalist but there were at least three situations in my life amazingly described by my favourite P. G. Wodehouse ‘It's always just when a chappie is feeling particularly tophole, and more than usually braced with things in general that Fate sneaks up behind him with a bit of lead piping’. In moments like this you understand clearly that your free will and ability to choose of several alternatives has a certain limit you can’t cross. Well, people who know me well might consider my statement to be unexpected or even not true. I am known as a person of strong will, with almost unfailing intuition, ability to choose and take responsible for the choice. And now what, such an obedience to fate? It looks like surrendering, even weakness at the first sight. But just at the first.
Dug deeper, an understanding of the power needed and the hard choice taken to stop. It is easy to choose when you want, crave and aspire to something so much, you even break the walls. It is harder when there are more or less equal alternatives and you are hesitating. Almost impossible when you saw the goal, touched the dream and have to give it up. It demands titanic efforts. I remember when in 2005 we were taken by a raider takeover. All of my instincts were shouting that I should fight till the end. But I listened to my other inner voice. Accept reality. Change your attitude towards it. Rise above the situation and realize that it hap-pened in your life for some reason. And even if there’s no clear explanation, accept it anyway. It already happened. Reality changed and you have to choose in this transformed one. Life has shown that it was a right choice. Those “bad people” were celebrating the Pyrrhic victory while we were building a new clinic, better, bigger, modern. This story has a good positive ending. Others are more complicated. Sometimes choice is not action, not even refusing to act, but waiting which due to my temper seems to be almost unbearable. But no matter how heavy my burden is I will hardly refuse to carry it. Because when I choose, I exist.
