Harmanjit shared with me a remarkable book called The Family and Society by Leonid Zhukhovitsky (also spelled Zhukhovit︠s︡kiĭ). The book doesn't seem to have been very popular, but it contains a world of wisdom within its less than fifty pages. Sharing some gems from it in this post:
In an ordinary family, I was thinking, any big quarrel may bring the partners to the verge of divorce—for they live under each other's noses and there is nowhere to escape to in order to give it time and calm down. But in a large family, even a serious discord is only with one out of five or seven and it is not at all necessary to split up... Husbandless mothers may still exist in a family like this, but there will be no fatherless children.
***
The better we live the easier it is to divorce from the material point of view... Previously, it was possible to get divorced but there was no place to go. It is easier today—they are building a lot of new flats. We have become more cultural and better educated, and we are therefore more demanding of the person we live with. A lack of common interests is a widespread and sufficient reason for divorce; we do not want to lead a boring life!
To some extent the growth in the divorce rate is a kind of a tax on good living.
***
The family is destroyed by the very concept of some ideal structure, which is almost automatically obliged to provide us with a happy life. The logic is as follows: the family is good, and I am good, but things are bad at home. Whose fault is it? Obviously, whoever is nearest to us. But the person who is nearest to us thinks exactly the same. So the destructive work starts from both sides.
***
Once an eminent Estonian scientist, Gustav Naan, wrote in Literaturnaya gazeta that the family is a self-destructive system. What a clever idea! The gradual deconstruction of the family is not an exceptional phenomenon but a normal one. It falls apart not through the fault or malicious intent of one of the partners but simply because everything on earth sooner or later falls to pieces. Do you want to preserve your house? Then repair it regularly, rebuild it, build onto it and adapt it to changes and new situations...
***
Why are you getting married? Nine girls gave nearly identical answers: In order to be happy. And only the tenth said: In order to make my husband happy. I'm afraid that she was the only one out of the ten who found happiness.
***
Divorce is quite common nowadays. It is something else that is strange—the fact that marriages based on love turned out to be the weakest ones. Yes, it is true. Those who were looking for some practical purpose in marriage are still living together—maybe not ideally, but still they are together. However, marriages founded on the most impassioned love broke shatteringly into pieces.
***
In marriages of love, both of course are counting on their love remaining as passionate as it was before the marriage. Whet safety margin is there in passionate love? Unfortunately, not everything depends on our intentions...
Love's passion is the greatest of joy and the greatest miracle. It has thousands of virtues. It lacks only one thing—stability.
***
Millions of people suffer because love-passion becomes weaker with time. But nature gave us quite an adequate compensation: love-friendship, which grows stronger all the time. Where human relations are being built, the house builds itself automatically.
***
The experience of happy family should be studied on its black days.
***
Both love and misfortune enter our lives unannounced, and it is not within our power to stop them. But it is totally up to us whether or not we meet them without losing our dignity, conscience and humaneness. Experience shows that family catastrophes cannot be resolved by pressurizing—evil feelings won't help; it is only like smashing your fist against the wall that has appeared between people. On the other hand, kindness will carefully and tenderly dismantle it brick by brick.
Download The Family and Society by Leonid Zhukhovitsky. If the link stops working, notify me through a comment or contact me with your email.
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| The Family and Society by Leonid Zhukhovitsky (Cover) |
Quotes from The Family and Society by Leonid Zhukhovitsky
In an ordinary family, I was thinking, any big quarrel may bring the partners to the verge of divorce—for they live under each other's noses and there is nowhere to escape to in order to give it time and calm down. But in a large family, even a serious discord is only with one out of five or seven and it is not at all necessary to split up... Husbandless mothers may still exist in a family like this, but there will be no fatherless children.
***
The better we live the easier it is to divorce from the material point of view... Previously, it was possible to get divorced but there was no place to go. It is easier today—they are building a lot of new flats. We have become more cultural and better educated, and we are therefore more demanding of the person we live with. A lack of common interests is a widespread and sufficient reason for divorce; we do not want to lead a boring life!
To some extent the growth in the divorce rate is a kind of a tax on good living.
***
The family is destroyed by the very concept of some ideal structure, which is almost automatically obliged to provide us with a happy life. The logic is as follows: the family is good, and I am good, but things are bad at home. Whose fault is it? Obviously, whoever is nearest to us. But the person who is nearest to us thinks exactly the same. So the destructive work starts from both sides.
***
Once an eminent Estonian scientist, Gustav Naan, wrote in Literaturnaya gazeta that the family is a self-destructive system. What a clever idea! The gradual deconstruction of the family is not an exceptional phenomenon but a normal one. It falls apart not through the fault or malicious intent of one of the partners but simply because everything on earth sooner or later falls to pieces. Do you want to preserve your house? Then repair it regularly, rebuild it, build onto it and adapt it to changes and new situations...
***
Why are you getting married? Nine girls gave nearly identical answers: In order to be happy. And only the tenth said: In order to make my husband happy. I'm afraid that she was the only one out of the ten who found happiness.
***
Divorce is quite common nowadays. It is something else that is strange—the fact that marriages based on love turned out to be the weakest ones. Yes, it is true. Those who were looking for some practical purpose in marriage are still living together—maybe not ideally, but still they are together. However, marriages founded on the most impassioned love broke shatteringly into pieces.
***
In marriages of love, both of course are counting on their love remaining as passionate as it was before the marriage. Whet safety margin is there in passionate love? Unfortunately, not everything depends on our intentions...
Love's passion is the greatest of joy and the greatest miracle. It has thousands of virtues. It lacks only one thing—stability.
***
Millions of people suffer because love-passion becomes weaker with time. But nature gave us quite an adequate compensation: love-friendship, which grows stronger all the time. Where human relations are being built, the house builds itself automatically.
***
The experience of happy family should be studied on its black days.
***
Both love and misfortune enter our lives unannounced, and it is not within our power to stop them. But it is totally up to us whether or not we meet them without losing our dignity, conscience and humaneness. Experience shows that family catastrophes cannot be resolved by pressurizing—evil feelings won't help; it is only like smashing your fist against the wall that has appeared between people. On the other hand, kindness will carefully and tenderly dismantle it brick by brick.
Download The Family and Society by Leonid Zhukhovitsky. If the link stops working, notify me through a comment or contact me with your email.
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