OH, MY GOODNESS, IT MUST BE SAND
One must take into account the fact that the Ukrainian people have been through too much sorrow during the course of their history: the revolution of 1917, which brought about the civil war, the collectivization, the man-made famine of 1932-33, the repressions, the World War 2, the post-war famine, the communist regime - and this is only an insignificant part of the suffering in the context of the whole history of the development of our people. We are still struggling for independence, preservation of the Ukrainian language and culture; our anthem reflects the idea that we are still on the path to becoming a nation.
We do not have a common clear vision of the goal and the means to implement it yet. Meanwhile, other European nations have passed the period of their national formation, our country still lives with the ideas of the 19th century. Today's challenges dictate other reality. Developed countries conquer new markets, improving the quality of their products. They aggressively wage a new commercial war, in which, unfortunately, we are still losing.
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Many people mistakenly believe that the reason for our drawbacks is alcohol, drugs, laziness etc. However, they forget one simple truth - there are no causeless reasons. If you prohibit the sale of alcohol and do not change the conditions of life, the effect of stress, received by the human psyche from the cruel modern conditions of life, will be directed inwards and begin to destroy the body. Then the question arises: what is more harmful for a person: stress or alcohol? Logical dilemma suggests that the lesser of the two evils is always preferred. Stress leads to heart diseases; it destroys immunity and opens a way for the development of cancerous tumors. Excessive abuse of alcohol has devastating consequences as well.
A great number of people know how to balance between the two fires. At a glance, it may seem that they are strong-willed and easily cope with difficulty. No, they simply do not feel an enormous pressure of social conditions, since they are adapted to them. If they have many problems and do not relieve the tension with antidepressants, drugs, alcohol or religion, they direct the destructive forces of the psyche to self-destruction of the body. The problem of drug and alcohol dependence has a common cause - social pressure, which pushes a person into a blind alley of devastation because of its cruelty. If society lacks moral ideals and focuses only on material well-being, it makes it very difficult for a person to achieve an honorable success in an external cruel world, where everything is subjected to money.
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The moral fulfillment is internal; it depends on the effort that a person directs toward himself and to each individual it gives an opportunity to manifest himself in society, to show his usefulness and significance, provided that society evaluates such actions by giving them an incentive. Therefore, the focus should be on morals, not money. A child who grows up away from guiding moral principles, who has not been accustomed to moral debt since childhood, evades from school and family responsibilities and escapes social pressure, leading a carefree life. However, when he reaches adulthood, he enters into an adult reality, where social conditions become paramount. He has to restrain himself, exerting efforts on the psyche. And from time to time, or constantly, he removes the accumulated heaviness from the soul by means of alcohol or drugs. Therefore, to effectively fight against alcohol, they need to change the conditions of life: rooting out the cause and stop insensibly struggling with the consequences. Enough! That's all there's to it. We should steer away from sad thoughts.
Love can change people for the better. It inspires, gives energy for noble deeds and provides meaning to impoverished existence. This happened in the case of Cardan as well. One day he went to a young widow to offer some services and, having grown fond of her, helped her for free. His chest began to breathe deeply and enticingly. His lungs did not keep up with the rhythm of the inner beat and he gasped from the lack of air. Cardan's brain no longer worked as before, something seemed to have clouded it. He began to do things he had never done before: he helped the widow free of charge. In the long run, such noble actions of Cardan inculcated sympathy in the widow; a strong man's hand was felt, which led to a mutual desire to live together. Cardan significantly reduced his consumption of alcohol. Family concerns dragged him into their whirlpool up to the neck. He no longer drank alcohol the way he had used to.
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But emotions, excited by love, gradually began to fade away. Family commitments began pressing on him. The lack of money led to quarrels, which day by day only precipitated the approach of a rolling avalanche. It did not take much to fall off the wagon for him. He started drinking again. Little by little Cardan began to resume his adventurous pranks. In order not to spoil the reputation of a family man in his village, he moved to shake down some people for alcohol in the neighboring one for a change.
Right now he was flying blind in the dark with no actual plan, just movement. He noticed how Colorado beetles were sprayed with pesticide on the collective farm field planted with potatoes. Along the road he saw a garbage dump, thrown out by some irresponsible villager. It was not an ordinary dump, there was more to it than met the eye. Precisely as he anticipated there was indeed something of value in its contents. A thought crossed his mind that money lay on the ground, he just had to pick it up. Suddenly, he came up with an idea and set off to give it a quick fix. He managed to find one liter glass jar. A hundred meters off the road was a stream. Cardan walked toward it; carefully washed the jar and filled it with water, taken from a puddle on the field. Water was stagnant in the sun after a long-lasting rain and changed its crystal-clear color to yellowish-muddy. He lifted the jar against the sun to examine its contents more closely. “Something's wrong”, he thought. Taking a handful of sand from the ground, he put it into the jar and shook it around. The sand whirled, lifting a column of a whirlwind in the muddy water. "Bingo! This is exactly what I need," he whispered to himself and headed for the nearest household.
It was obvious at first sight that the potato plot, adjoining the house, was in a deplorable state. The Colorado beetles were devouring the plant tops, threatening to leave the owners without a harvest. The vegetable garden belonged to a lonely old woman, who stood in the yard; she was watching her land attentively with her eyes protected from the dazzling sun by her hand. Cardan realized that the situation was a win-win.
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He walked into the yard, carrying the jar in front of him with the concoction of his own making. He paced quickly, panting with haste, as if he got a wild hair; his wide-open and worried eyes gave him the appearance of a gypsy, leading away a stolen horse. To his mind, if a deal was not struck spontaneously, it was not worth having. Cardan often acted on the spur of the moment.
“Do you need pesticide for the Colorado beetles?” asked Cardan, catching his breath. “Look, the tractor is spraying potatoes on the field. I came to you from there. We have a little left over. If you need it, I can trade it for alcohol.”
She called back the dog, which was bouncing towards Cardan and gave him a quick once-over. He stayed where he was. He had always been suspicious of big dogs since one had jumped up and nipped him on his first visit to one of the old women.
"And, how much do you want for it? We`re always strapped for money here.” She gave him a tight little grin.
“A jar of pesticide for a jar of vodka.”
The old woman took Cardan's concoction, raised the jar against the sun, scrutinizing it meticulously. A sliver of doubt sliced through the curtains of her mind and caused a flash of hesitation.
“And, who are you?” she asked incredulously.
“Don't you keep up with current events, lady? I'm a young agronomist from the neighboring village,” Cardan answered with utmost importance.
“Isn`t it sand at the bottom of the jar?”
The old woman shook the contents time and again.
“Let me get this straight. This process is called crystallization. The poison is fresh, so it is in a state of granules. You'll take a stick, stir them with it, and the granules will dissolve. So it's not worth the worry,” Cardan explained the procedure to her.
"I assure you as a professional that the differences are absolutely night and day between the pesticide that you can buy in a local marketplace and the one that I am offering you. This pesticide is a real treasure. In this day and age and for this price it's a real steal. I have tested it several times myself. The results are remarkable. And that's all there's to it."
She was reluctant to go to the market and to waste money on pesticide, so she finally fell for it. Cardan, satisfied with the deal, made himself scarce. He disappeared like a ghost. The old woman began to prepare the pesticide quickly stirring the "granules". Five minutes of painstaking work produced no visible effect. Ten minutes - the number of the "granules" did not decrease at all. She lifted the jar and directed it against the sun. "Oh, my goodness, it must be sand," she muttered and continued to stir the “granules” again. Half an hour of laborious effort did not yield any results. "Oh, my goodness, I swear, it must be sand," the frustrated old woman said her guess aloud."I have to give it a little bit more stirring before I call it a day," she thought. Nevertheless, it did not work out; all of her endeavors went pear-shaped.
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“Let it stand until morning; perhaps the granules will dissolve by themselves.”
She put the jar aside.
On the following day first thing in the morning the old woman went over the procedure once more – no results. A sense of impending frustration began to settle deeper in her head.
"It boggles my mind that the granules can't be dissolved. How could it be?" She said perplexedly.
She couldn't help but wondering what it would be like to heat it up on the stove. "That might do the trick." But she thought better of it. Finally, she couldn't take it any longer. Overwhelmed with anger and frustration, she decided to get it over with and poured the contents of the jar on a wooden board, felt the “granules” with her fingers, sniffed them - no smell. She touched her tongue with the wet finger and finally realized that all the moments of doubt that she had experienced crystallized into a shocking reality. "It rather tastes plain. It must be innocuous stuff. Oh, my goodness, it's definitely sand and water." She wanted to add some other guess, but the words got in the way. Oh, that swindler! He won't escape God's punishment!" she desperately forced out bitter words for the last time.
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