Hello my friends I have a beautiful story to share with you today and hope that you find it sweet.

Anton Chekhov was born in Taganarog, Russia in 1860, and his existence could not have been more miserable. The town was poor and deadbeat and so was his familiy. His father would beat the crap out of him on a daily basis just because.
He once wrote to his brother "Let me ask you to recall that it was despotism and lying that ruined your mother's youth. Despotism and lying so mutilated our childhood that it's sickening and frightening to think about it. Remember the horror and disgust we felt in those times when Father threw a tantrum at dinner over too much salt in the soup and called Mother a fool." Also, in another letter, "I remember that my father began my education, or rather my beatings, before the age of five. Every day as soon as I awoke my first thought would be is he going to beat me today?" As a further degradation, after the beatings he was forced to kiss his father's hand.

Every member of his family had tyranical aspects to them. None of them had the qualities of brain that Chekhov posessed and one can only imagine how this, alongside a constant string of abuse and poverty, would have led to Chekhov's becoming alieanated and adopting the psychological scripts and conditioning congruent with his familiy life (like Chekhov's brother would do, later beating his wife and kids.) However something different ocurred inside the author's soul. He decided that he was gonna forgive his father and learn to love him. That he only beat him because his father used to bit him. He would learn to love them all; his sickly mother, his alcoholic brother.

In 1875 Chekhov's fathers buissnes collapsed and he fled with his familiy to Moscow in order to avoid prison time for debt. Young Chekhov however stayed behind, left to sell the family's possessions and finish his education.

In Moscow his mother grew ill and depressed, which is common given the abuse she suffered throughout her life. His brothers were studying in Moscow, both of them poor in mind, spirit, and economy.

Being that he was abbandoned and left to himself, he could have easiliy cut contact with his familiy and never looked back. The ressentment and ill will could have gotten the best of him, but lonley Chekhov went completley in the other direction; he decided that this was his reality. This was his familiy. They were miserable. And he could abandon them and let them perpetuate their misery, or he could build the life he was born to live and share it with them and create his own little place of peace in the world.

Chekhov got accepted into med-school and became a physician while practicing the craft of fiction writing, publishing, and going on his way to becoming a literary classic. By age 26 he had written more than 400 works of fiction. Every bit of resentment he had felt was transmutated into his fiction; his father became an archetype he could use in his stories to represent hypocricy, violence, and the pains of poverty and ignorance.

He was a country doctor and barley made any money given that he helped the poor that could not pay for medical expenses, thus he was forced to make a living on his writing, in order to support everyone.
He was known to be kind, witty, and generous. During his lifetime he accepeted his familiy and the pain caused to him and supported his familiy both economically and emotionally through out all of their lives, altering them fundamentally. By moving in with them in Moscow, his acceptance of them and intellect allowed him to get his father out of the house and into a better job, influenced his sigblings to start reading and to see that there is more to life than just pettyness.

Meanwhile Chekhov's fiction is a manifestation of this life path. He says about his work "All I wanted was to say honestly to people: "Have a look at yourselves and see how bad and dreary your lives are!" The important thing is that people should realize that, for when they do, they will most certainly create another and better life for themselves. I will not live to see it, but I know that it will be quite different, quite unlike our present life. And so long as this different life does not exist, I shall go on saying to people again and again: "Please, understand that your life is bad and dreary!"


Time will pass, and we shall go away for ever, and we shall be forgotten, our faces will be forgotten, our voices, and how many there were of us; but our sufferings will pass into joy for those who will live after us, happiness and peace will be established upon earth, and they will remember kindly and bless those who have lived before.

---ANTON CHEKHOV, The Three Sisters


When we give into feelings of helplesness, resentment, and hatred, we perpetuate human suffering. Though he would recieve no medal and no praise, Chekhov single handedley created a better, more beautiful life for his whole family and friends and himself, making them smarter and nicer with just his being around them.

He would die at 44 in 1904.


Chekhov with his familiy.
'The world perishes not from bandits and fires, but from hatred, hostility, and all these petty squabbles.' Anton Chekhov.

Thanks for posting this, FranLover. Really good message here. Once we embrace our own misery, we can hopefully gain a space to work with it. Changing all that resentment into love must have been so difficult. Good on Chekhov for coming to this realisation.