During his life, the Soviet scientist Dmitry Sergeevich Likhachev wrote more than 1000 articles, left about 500 scientific and 600 publicistic works. And also more than 40 books on the history of Old Russian literature and Russian culture. But one of the most interesting and valuable books of Likhachev is the testament book: "Letters about the good and the beautiful." These "letters" (46 letters) are addressed to young people who have yet to learn life, to follow its difficult paths. Today it is the most authoritative collection of wisdom.
Excerpts from advice letters:
1. Take care of youth
True friends are made in youth. I remember that my mother's only true friends were her high school friends. My father had friends with his fellow students at the institute. And no matter how much I observed, openness to friendship gradually decreases with age. Youth is a time of convergence. And this should be remembered and friends should be protected, for real friendship helps a lot in sorrow and in joy. In joy, you also need help: help to feel happiness to the core, to feel and share it.
Unrequited joy is not joy. A person is spoiled by happiness if he experiences it alone. When the time of misfortunes comes, the time of loss - again, you cannot be alone. Woe to a man if he is alone.
Therefore, take care of youth to a ripe old age. Appreciate all the good things that you acquired in your youth, do not waste the wealth of your youth. Nothing acquired in youth passes without a trace. Habits brought up in youth persist for life. Work skills, too. Accustomed to work - and work will always bring joy. And how important it is for human happiness! There is no more unhappy person who is lazy, eternally avoiding work, efforts …
Both in youth and old age. Good habits of youth will make life easier, bad habits will complicate and complicate it.
And further. There is a Russian proverb: "Take care of your honor from your youth." All actions committed in youth remain in the memory. The good ones will please, the bad ones will keep you awake!
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2. Big in small
The adage “the end justifies the means” is destructive and immoral. Dostoevsky showed this well in Crime and Punishment. The main character of this work, Rodion Raskolnikov, thought that by killing a disgusting old woman-usurer, he would get money, with which he could then achieve great goals and benefit mankind, but suffers an internal collapse. The goal is distant and unrealizable, but the crime is real; it is terrible and cannot be justified by anything. It is impossible to strive for a high goal with low means. You have to be equally honest in both big and small.
3. The greatest value is life
"Inhale - exhale, exhale!" To breathe in deeply, you must exhale well. First of all, learn to exhale, to get rid of the “exhaust air”.
Life is primarily breathing. "Soul", "spirit"! And he died - first of all - "stopped breathing." So they thought from time immemorial. "Ghost out!" - it means "died".
It is "stuffy" in the house, "stuffy" and in moral life. Thoroughly exhale all the petty worries, all the vanity of everyday life, get rid of, shake off everything that impedes the movement of thought, that crushes the soul, does not allow a person to accept life, its values, its beauty. A person should always think about the most important for himself and for others, throwing off all empty worries from himself.
We must be open to people, tolerant of people, look for the best in them first of all. The ability to seek and find the best, simply "good", "hidden beauty" enriches a person spiritually. Noticing beauty in nature, in a village, city, street, not to mention in a person, through all the barriers of little things, means expanding the sphere of life, the sphere of that vital space in which a person lives.
The greatest value in the world is life: someone else's, one's own, the life of the animal world and plants, the life of culture, life throughout its entire length - both in the past, in the present, and in the future … And life is infinitely deep. We always meet with something that we did not notice before, that amazes us with its beauty, unexpected wisdom, and uniqueness.
4. The biggest goal in life
What is the biggest goal of life? I think: to increase the goodness in the environment around us. And good is, first of all, the happiness of all people … Much, as I have already said, begins with small things, arises in childhood and in those close to you. The child loves his mother and his father, brothers and sisters, his family, his home. Gradually expanding, his affections spread to school, village, city, and his entire country. And this is already a very big and deep feeling, although one cannot stop there and one must love a person in a person.
You have to be a patriot, not a nationalist. There is no need to hate every other family, because you love yours. There is no need to hate other nations because you are a patriot. There is a profound difference between patriotism and nationalism. In the first - love for their country, in the second - hatred for all others.
The big goal of good begins with a small one - with the desire for good for one's loved ones, but, expanding, it captures an ever wider range of issues. It's like circles on water. But the circles on the water, expanding, become weaker and weaker. Love and friendship, expanding and spreading to many things, acquire new strength, become ever higher, and the person, their center, is wiser.
Love should not be unaccountable, it should be smart. This means that it must be combined with the ability to notice flaws, to deal with flaws - both in a loved one and in the people around. It must be combined with wisdom, with the ability to separate the necessary from the empty and the false. She doesn't have to be blind.
Blind delight (you can't even call it love) can lead to dire consequences. A mother who admires everything and encourages her child in everything can bring up a moral monster. Blind admiration for Germany ("Germany above all" - the words of a chauvinistic German song) led to Nazism, blind admiration for Italy - to fascism.
5. Vital purpose
By what a person lives for, one can judge his self-esteem - low or high.
If a person sets himself the task of acquiring all the elementary material goods, he evaluates himself at the level of these material goods: as the owner of a car of the latest brand, as the owner of a luxurious dacha, as part of his furniture set …
If a person lives in order to bring good to people, to alleviate their suffering in case of illness, to give people joy, then he evaluates himself at the level of this humanity. He sets himself a goal worthy of a man.
Only a vital goal allows a person to live his life with dignity and receive real joy. Yes, joy! Think: if a person sets himself the task of increasing goodness in life, bringing people happiness, what failures can befall him?
If you are a doctor, then, perhaps, you misdiagnosed the patient? This happens with the best doctors. But in total, you still helped more than you did not. No one is immune from mistakes. But the most important mistake, a fatal mistake, is the wrongly chosen main task in life.
Not promoted - chagrin. I didn't have time to buy a stamp for my collection - it was a shame. Someone has a better furniture than you, or a better car - again a grief, and what a great deal!
Setting himself the task of a career or an acquisition, a person experiences in total much more grief than joys, and risks losing everything. And what can a person lose if he rejoiced in every good deed? It is only important that the good that a person does would be his inner need, would come from an intelligent heart, and not just from the head, would not be just one “principle”.
Therefore, the main life task must necessarily be a broader task than just a personal one; it should not be limited only to one's own successes and failures. It should be dictated by kindness to people, love for family, for your city, for your people, country, for the whole universe.
Does this mean that a person should live like an ascetic, not take care of himself, not acquire anything and not rejoice in a simple promotion? Not at all! A person who does not think about himself at all is an abnormal phenomenon and personally unpleasant to me: there is some kind of breakdown in this, some kind of ostentatious exaggeration in himself of his kindness, selflessness, significance, there is some kind of contempt for other people, the desire to stand out.
Therefore, I am only talking about the main task in life. And this main task in life should not be emphasized in the eyes of other people. And you need to dress well (this is respect for others), but not necessarily "better than others." And you need to compile a library for yourself, but not necessarily larger than that of your neighbor. And it's good to buy a car for yourself and your family - it's convenient. Just don’t turn the secondary into the primary, and you don’t need the main goal of life to exhaust you where it is not needed. When you need it is another matter.
6. What unites people?
Care floors. Caring strengthens relationships between people. It strengthens the family, strengthens friendship, holds together the inhabitants of one city, one country.
Track a person's life. A person is born, and the first concern for him is the mother; gradually (after a few days) the father's care for him comes into direct contact with the child (before the child was born, the care for him was already, but was to a certain extent "abstract" - the parents were preparing for the appearance of the child, dreamed of him).
Caring is growing and becoming more altruistic. Children pay for taking care of themselves by caring for old parents, when they can no longer repay for caring for children. And this concern for the elderly, and then for the memory of deceased parents, seems to merge with the concern for the historical memory of the family and the motherland as a whole.
If care is directed only to oneself, then an egoist grows up.
Caring - unites people, strengthens the memory of the past and is directed entirely towards the future. This is not the feeling itself - it is a concrete manifestation of the feeling of love, friendship, patriotism. A person should be caring. A careless or carefree person is most likely an unkind person and does not love anyone.
Surprisingly correct thought: "A small step for man, a big step for mankind." There are thousands of examples of this: it costs nothing to be kind to one person, but it is incredibly difficult for humanity to become kind.
It is impossible to correct humanity; it is easy to correct yourself. Feeding a child, leading an old man across the street, making way for a seat on a tram, working well, being polite and courteous … and so on and so forth are all easy for a person, but incredibly difficult for everyone at once. That's why you need to start with yourself.
Good cannot be stupid. A good deed is never stupid, because it is selfless and does not pursue the goal of profit and "smart result". You can call a good deed "stupid" only when it clearly could not achieve the goal or was "falsely kind", mistakenly kind, that is, not kind. I repeat, a truly good deed cannot be stupid, it is beyond evaluations from the point of view of the mind or not the mind. So good and good.
7. About Education
You can get a good upbringing not only in your family or at school, but also … from yourself. You just need to know what real good breeding is.
I do not undertake to give "recipes" for good breeding, since I do not consider myself exemplarily well-mannered at all. But I would like to share some thoughts with the readers.
I am convinced, for example, that real good breeding is manifested primarily at home, in my family, in relations with my relatives.
If a man on the street lets an unfamiliar woman pass ahead of him (even on a bus!) And even opens the door for her, and at home does not help a tired wife wash the dishes, he is an ill-mannered person.
If he is polite with his acquaintances, and with his family he is annoyed on every occasion, he is an ill-mannered person.
If he does not take into account the character, psychology, habits and desires of his loved ones, he is an ill-mannered person. If already in adulthood he takes the help of his parents for granted and does not notice that they themselves already need help, he is an ill-mannered person.
If he turns on the radio and TV loudly or just talks loudly when someone is preparing lessons or reading at home (even if it is his little children), he is an ill-mannered person and will never bring up his children.
If he likes to mock (joke) over his wife or children, not sparing their pride, especially in front of strangers, then here he (excuse me!) Is simply stupid.
A well-mannered person is one who wants and knows how to reckon with others, this is one to whom his own politeness is not only familiar and easy, but also pleasant. This is the one who is equally polite with the elder and younger years and by position.
A well-bred person in all respects does not behave "loudly", saves the time of others ("Accuracy is the courtesy of kings" - says the proverb), strictly fulfills the promises made to others, does not put on airs, does not "turn up his nose" and is always the same - at home, at school, at the institute, at work, in the store and on the bus.
Yes, good manners can be very external, but in general, good manners are created by the experience of many generations and mark the centuries-old desire of people to be better, to live more conveniently and beautifully.
Manners, clothes, gait, all behavior should be restrained and … beautiful. For any beauty does not tire. She is "social". And so-called good manners always have a deep meaning. Do not think that good manners are only manners, that is, something superficial. By your behavior, you bring out your essence. It is necessary to cultivate in oneself not so much manners, as what is expressed in manners, a respectful attitude towards the world: towards society, towards nature, towards animals and birds, towards plants, towards the beauty of the area, towards the past of the places where you live, etc. e. It is necessary not to memorize hundreds of rules, but to remember one thing - the need to respect others.
Dmitry Likhachev. Favorites. Thoughts about life, history, culture.
This collection is a unique publication that for the first time collected within the framework of one book D. S. Likhachev's current and current thoughts about the history and culture of Russia, its place in world history, its mission and geopolitical role in Eurasia, about the most important spiritual qualities of a person, about true intelligence. and imaginary, about the ecology of culture and the preservation of the environment on planet Earth. Dmitry Sergeevich Likhachev, one of the greatest Russian humanities scholars, historian, philologist, and prominent public figure, personified the type of a truly Russian intellectual, a patriot of his country, alien, however, of nationalism in all its manifestations. He became one of the organizers and inspirers of the Soviet (then Russian) Culture Fund, and for the sake of preserving Russian culture he did immeasurably much. His thoughts, speeches, aphorisms, purified,where it is possible, from censorship "layers", for the first time become available to the reader in a complex form.
For a wide range of readers interested in the past and present of Russian culture, history, philology and life of Russia.