Good Advice From Chekhov

Anton Chekhov is one of my favorite writers, and the quote I'm going to discuss this post is one of my favorite quotes from literature. It is taken from the short story, "Gooseberries." The passage is a challenge to those who feel more comfortable than perhaps they should. Chekhov grew up a peasant and most of his life he suffered from tuberculosis. The words in the paragraph below are spoken by the narrator, Ivan Ivanovitch, but clearly come from Chekhov's own experience, and are a prod for everyone to be vigilant and pay attention, especially to those who are marginalized.

"You look at life: the insolence and idleness of the strong, the ignorance and brutishness of the weak, incredible poverty all about us, overcrowding, degeneration, drunkenness, hypocrisy, lying. . . . Yet all is calm and stillness in the houses and in the streets; of the fifty thousand living in a town, there is not one who would cry out, who would give vent to his indignation aloud. We see the people going to market for provisions, eating by day, sleeping by night, talking their silly nonsense, getting married, growing old, serenely escorting their dead to the cemetery; but we do not see and we do not hear those who suffer, and what is terrible in life goes on somewhere behind the scenes. . . . Everything is quiet and peaceful, and nothing protests but mute statistics: so many people gone out of their minds, so many gallons of vodka drunk, so many children dead from malnutrition. . . . And this order of things is evidently necessary; evidently the happy man only feels at ease because the unhappy bear their burdens in silence, and without that silence happiness would be impossible. It's a case of general hypnotism. There ought to be behind the door of every happy, contented man some one standing with a hammer continually reminding him with a tap that there are unhappy people; that however happy he may be, life will show him her laws sooner or later, trouble will come for him -- disease, poverty, losses, and no one will see or hear, just as now he neither sees nor hears others. But there is no man with a hammer; the happy man lives at his ease, and trivial daily cares faintly agitate him like the wind in the aspen-tree -- and all goes well."

A large part of Disability Studies is the fact that most people are not born disabled but rather become disabled. That is why these words mean so much to me. In our modern culture those who are "healthy" often shy away or don't know how to respond to those who are ill. Often the "healthy" expect the sick to suffer in silence or to merely bite the bullet rather than complain so the "healthy" don't have to think about discomfort. The problem is the "healthy" become the sick, and then wonder why no one is paying attention to them, even though they had not paid attention to others when others were in need of a caring hand.

I know from my own experience that when I talk about diabetes often people nod, but then quickly want to move to another topic. But then if something happens, they say I never told them what was going on. As Chekhov says, "it's a case of general hypnotism."

To me, humans can never be content with themselves until they hear the man at the door with the little hammer, and answer the call and leave their homes to bring aid and comfort, not just to people of status and beauty, but to everyone.