The biggest lesson my grandma taught me
and a new poem I wrote this week.
Last month, my grandma celebrated her 86th birthday. At dinner, my uncle played digitalized recordings of home videos that showed Grandma’s birthdays from the last 30 years. As half of our family doesn’t live in Belarus anymore and cannot visit, the snippets of the videos were shared in the family chat. They showed little me reciting a birthday poem, my parents, who were younger than I am now, relatives and family friends who passed away years ago. Grandma used to hire a videographer for every jubilee birthday, and he followed all the guests and recorded dancing, singing, and conversations. Back then, many people thought it was unnecessary, but now, these videos are a priceless treasure and a window into the forgotten past.
In every video, my grandma was singing, dancing, and smiling like the happiest person in the world. Her laughter was contagious, and she was the life and soul of the party. Looking at her, you would have never guessed how many hardships she went through and how cruel life was to her. She looked happy, and she was happy, despite living through one unimaginably difficult period after another. She survived the Second World War, famine, the Soviet dictatorship, the poverty that followed after its collapse, more than 20 years of abuse in the marriage, and then being left alone with three children and working multiple jobs to make ends meet. Life has never given her a break.
I looked at my grandma, dancing and smiling, and thought that I must learn from her how to find joy even when it seems impossible. We can’t control many things in our lives, but we can still be happy. We can still smile after we finish crying. We can still dance after being thrown to the ground. We can organize the biggest party in town to celebrate this life despite being given a million reasons to hate it. No matter what happened in the past or will happen in the future, we can choose to be happy and not to give up.
I will finish with a poem I wrote this week:
These days These days, a new bloom of a spring flower holds more importance to me than endless scandalous and wrong takes of the politicians, not because I became ignorant, but because I started to consciously choose how I spend the limited time of my life. These days, I choose to make my heart sing with joy than race with fear, not because I stopped being afraid, but because it gives me the energy to fight.
Warmly,
Darya
Email: daryazorka@substack.com
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And choosing happiness is in and of itself a form of resistance. And yes, it gives energy rather than stealing it, and it helps not only the person who feels happy, but those around them too.
A beautiful lesson to learn.
"We can still smile after we finishing crying."