(essay)

The zone of comfort… Nobody knows why, but such an opinion circulates that, for many Ukrainians, the zone of comfort is “SUFFERING.”

“My great-grandparents and my grandparents suffered a lot, survived in the Holodomor times (1932-1933), and passed through the WWII fronts from 1941-1945… My parents suffered too; their lives were full of economic and moral hardships… Now it’s our turn to suffer from living in the terrible times of the Russian-Ukrainian war… Oh, God! What a mess!”

However, I think that it’s the present-day generation of young Ukrainians who will break this vicious circle. While looking at the photos of contemporary Kherson, we see the dramatic contrasts: heart-breaking ruins of well-known for all Kherson inhabitants administrative buildings and fascinating flowers growing not far from them; burnt autos placed on amusing anti-war asphalt drawings made by omnipresent children; windows covered with plywood instead of glass and sunny strawberries, beautiful blueberries and ripe raspberries sold on local markets.

Kids didn’t disappear from Kherson, they just moved to shelters to attend art clubs, oriental martial arts, first aid classes…

Though, now, in the Kherson sky there are more enemy drones than birds, life does not stop there; it grows stubbornly through the shambles of schools, the debris of kindergartens and heaps of old life.

Daily, Kherson people help each other; daily the Ukrainian Army protects the Kherson people; daily, the volunteers from all over the world help Kherson and its resilient and brave people. I guess they will never come back to the zone of comfort called “suffering”; in the foreseeable future they will build a new European-looking zone of comfort named “FLOURISHING”…