#blessings | Olya Aman

My face is different. But ‘different’ doesn’t always mean ‘worse’

I was shocked and, due to that, felt no pain at first. People were shouting and gesturing to one another, trying to figure out how to distract the furious beast. Somehow, I do not recollect exactly how it was pulled from me. The man who helped me in an old blue ‘Zhiguli’ and drove to the village dispensary and later to the nearest town hospital was the owner of the dog. In the hospital, I got nine stitches in four places on my face.

The doctor that performed the work of reconstructing my face did not know about cosmetic stitching. He simply decided the way he would do it was going to be sufficient. During the procedure, I concentrated on his deep, fine-tuned voice. To listen to him was like drinking warm ginger tea on a frosty winter day, and very likely it served as the best anesthetic for me. His work was not bad, just not good.

I have the scars, one is very visible, and people often ask about it. I consider it a part of my unique personality. I like my face. I love myself the way God created me and the way life, not always gentle, adjusted the sacred work.

Thoughts about my mother, her loving face darkened by suffering because of the incident, overpowered the fear of thread, needle, and pain. And even during the recovery, when the only recollection of the event made me shake with uncontrollable sobbing — the result of a great fright — I tried to compose myself with enormous energy. One glance at my mother’s eyes with a distinct element of worry pulled me together, and I did my best to laugh.

Providence is often a cruel teacher. The life-threatening experience I went through was there to spirit me for what was before to come. I had bad days, but not too many. I had loss enough, but not too much. Although, I feel completely miserable at times, I do my best to not feel depressed, rather unite the best blessings of my nature and learn to be a gainer in every situation.

I didn’t react to those unfortunate circumstances with deliberate self-pity. I thought of my mother and not of myself. From then on, my desire to give overpowers the desire to take. Lack of selfishness gives me the strength to withstand many of life’s calamities.

Whatever happens, I only need to understand how things are and accept the change, because ‘different’ doesn’t always mean ‘worse’.

I was armed at all points. It was a pleasure to be so completely equipped for the life battle with my gratitude weapons being polished steel. — Olya Aman

T. was a generous spirit. He had all the illumination of wisdom, and yet he was distressfully dying. I was touched with wonder at the depths of perception of which this person was capable. His unselfish belief in the idea that gratitude is a way to make the most of life was something I could set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to.

T. had a taint of death, a flavor of mortality in him—which is exactly what I needed to shake my world to the bottom. I hung on every syllable he uttered in his diary, and received, as oracles, all he wrote.

“Of parents extremely poor and extremely honest, it was next to impossible that I could paint my life other than in grateful colors. Our family seemed to be possessed with a kind of intellectual gaiety at the times of the most troublesome hardships. We were able to starve any thoughts of misery and lack of appreciation entirely away by just a mere force of heartfelt love to each other and to the life itself.”

“I often was bruised and felt scant of breath but never ungrateful. Every misfortune walked me away from despair and gave me the key to patience. I was a sick-nurse to my father. I was seriously out of health.”

“I had good winters and poor winters. I basked in the sun and went to bed when it rained. And I never forgot to spend a few moments a day reflecting on the things in my life I was blessed with.”

“I was determined to live longer, although the doctors professed the limit till just two-and-thirty. Imputing it to nothing but grateful feelings, which for ought I knew, prolonged my life extremely, I was able to make it to these days, waaay past forty.”

“When I was in pain I more often smiled than scowled. That was the foundation of my beauty despite of my many limitations. Had I lived my life again in every detail of desire, temptation, pain and surrender, I would have chosen the exact life I lived to the very aspect of sickness and every element of loss.”

“Gratitude gave me that easy confidence of manner. Always quite up to everything, I was a sort of person you could depend on, and that made me splendidly respectable by my partners and coworkers.”

“I took no notice of negative people and very little of pessimistic acquaintances. The wealth of positive emotion awakened pleasure and added loveliness and virtue to my life.”

“The fervency of my personality trembled from sunlight and fragrance. Gratitude created a barrier that was guarding me against cold and cheerless.”

“I looked on nature and my fellow-men and didn’t see the dark and gloomy. The cheerful colors prevailed, and those were reflections from my own grateful eyes.”

T. died at forty-eight. When I saw him last, he evidently found great difficulty speaking. He waited long to collect himself, and then he murmured simply: “Take this,” and he handed me his diary. That book had a voice that dropped deep into my soul.

The last page contained a message:

“Pain passes, but love remains. We suffer so much sometimes. I’m very old when I think about it, but I grow young again when I believe in generous mistakes that hurt, happy tears that burn, and deep adoration that squeezes the heart till every drop of love is revealed. And the only way to see the beauty in life is to be able to open your eyes every morning with extraordinary grateful gladness. Only this feeling will make you beyond the reach of pain.”

Actress / Writer / Producer