SARO SAROYAN

We live stooped; we relate by crawling; we think hungry (who else should we eat from among us?); we get happy with a sorrowful face.

Recognizing all this of course suggests that we are lacking something. Perhaps we don't have a head? That's why only our ears appear, and that's why we can’t figure out who we are and what we want from the world. Moreover, how can a being without a head think who the world's communities are and what they want from the world?

As paradoxical as it is, we don't have a head but we can sing. We sing, for example, our national anthem, "Our Fatherland, Free, Independent," but the deaf response, all the same, stabs our heart, saying "wretched, abandoned." Basically, a beaten idea lies in this "wretched" self-esteem of ours: we're an ancient nation, but the world is against us. And at the core of the self-appraisal of being "abandoned" lies another battered idea: we're a sliver of a country (nation), and if we forget our place, the big boys will make us disappear.

Saying "ancient nation," we definitely experience a feeling of pride, though we should cry.

We're proud because the vision of an "ancient nation" is called to palliate the entire tragedy of our wretchedness and abandonment. Accordingly, a magnificent, “grandiloquent” self-defense mechanism has been found, which declares: Who are you, monkeys of the not-so-distant past? And what do you want from us (when we had literature and script, you were swinging from the trees)?

Actually, if our ears were capable of listening, or similarly, if we had a head, it would tell us that for the ancient, the brain works slower, there is desperately less energy, and the motivation to work is an enjoyment shrouded with the aspiration to live peacefully. And for a few centuries now we've been trying to live peacefully, to enjoy our senile life after all, but restless young nations are constantly hanging from our beards, hanging on and on.

I remember, one of my friends said once, "With age, it's true, a person's analytical ability and courage decreases, but instead experience and factual knowledge increases." Does it? This comparable pattern between man and nation somehow doesn't work on the background of our nation's widespread inexperience and ignorance. Perhaps we are hopeless in our old age? After all, if we hadn't aged, it would become clear, for example, that the world is not against us and we are no longer wretched and abandoned — if we don't want to be.

And perhaps in this case we should accept that, in general, the world is not against anyone, since all communities are "against" each other; there are no friendly or enemy nations — there are [only] normal relations having interests. Or accept that generally in the world each community has its [own] goals and ideals, functions and life philosophies, which keep all humankind in natural balance. Communities that are hopeless, aimless, and have no contribution to ensuring overall balance (with the absence of any function), while the state forms shaped by large communities, naturally, are subject to liquidation (whereas nations are subject to assimilation, destruction/self-destruction).

Perhaps we should accept that we're neither wretched nor abandoned, if we ourselves don't want to be wretched and search for an "owner" (a "roof") [so as not to be abandoned]. We are free and independent to the extent to which our awareness and will are free and independent, to the extent that each of us have internal freedom, and the ability and desire to exert our will — to live freely and independently. We are free and independent, if each of us taken separately, as well as in our collectivity, has goals and ideals, a certain function (the awareness of assuming a function), and the awareness or desire of our own role in the task of maintaining balance in the family of nations.

But our nation's experience and factual knowledge today forces each of us to speak about what? The "merit" of our antiquity of course. In this case we must simply remember without exception all the nations with which we have a relation and in the process not to forget to grace our tormented soul with happiness, becoming proud of some of those nations no longer appearing on the stage of history. Instead: "We exist, we will be, and we will increase in number." Question: How? Stooped, crawling, hungry? Generally, ancient nations like poetic inclinations, but that's not what's not solving our problems.

Since only our ears appear in the 21st century, perhaps this question will become audible: Who are we and what do we want from the world? After that we must get out of this state of "having lost our head," find it, and ascertain which are the nations in this world and what do they want from the world. In the process, when we have a desire to overcome this stooped, crawling, and hungry state, with happy faces and youthful vigor we will think also about answering the question "how". Without answering those questions, we are a purposeless being, suffering from senility. In our "Maidan" we need to become young again.