How we meet, what we say to each other... “Where are you?” We usually ask each other this question when we meet by chance. Classmates, classmates, former colleagues. You haven't seen each other for 100 years and probably won't see each other for the same amount of time. At the same time, you ask a strange question: “Where are you?” And you get a brief report: company name, type of activity, position. Then a rebound: “Where are you?” In turn, you report in the same way. And part ways without really learning anything about each other. It would be easier to understand everything if the question implied your place in life here and now. Where I am? In a creative search, in depression, in a midlife crisis, in melancholy, in love, in a binge, in emptiness... But no, it concerns exclusively employment. Essentially means: “What is the last entry in your work record?” The Hopi Indians, for example, greeted each other with the word “hakomi,” which in their language means “How are you disposed towards all these many worlds?” Our “Where are you?” not so multidimensional, it is utilitarian. My friend is afraid of random meetings on the street with old acquaintances. She is a freelancer. To say: “I am nowhere” is as if to admit: “I am nobody.” Accuse yourself of some kind of inferiority. Although she earns a living, she is her own mistress. But he hears: “Where are you?” and feels out of place. And he already catches a sympathetic and condescending glance. In fact, when they see people on the street, they ask about the most important things. In the fishing villages of Goa, they greet each other in the local dialect with the question: “How many fish did you catch today?” The Chinese "hello" literally means "have you eaten today?" In Mongolia, they will politely ask if your cattle are healthy. And the German “how are you” - “wie geht es dir?” – literally means “how does it suit you?” In Russian: “How is it?” Or more directly: “Is it rushing?” This sounds familiar to us. At a chance meeting, “it” smacks of something indecently existential. We are ashamed of our depth. Let somewhere in India greet each other with folded palms, namaste, which means “the divine in me unites with the divine in you.” No, when we bow, we focus exclusively on each other’s social affiliation and inquire specifically about status. About the divine - these are questions like “do you respect me?” Possible only in altered states of consciousness. In our “Where are you?” something feudal. It implies that you do not belong to yourself. That it is not you who are valuable - as you are now, standing opposite, albeit old and tired, but some of your social conditioning. For centuries, our ancestors were “somewhere”, with someone. Someone's. “Whose will you be?” - they said when we met about 200 years ago. Now they are asking almost the same thing. Serfdom is not so easily eradicated. It can even be attractive. Our family preserves the memories of my great-great-grandmother Feodosia Feoktistovna. She was a girl when her father ransomed his landowner. And a couple of years later, serfdom was abolished. And their whole village was crying, people did not want to leave the master. In the 20th century, serfdom in Russia flourished again - with camps, registration, lack of passports for peasants... So “where are you?” and has become a vital issue in our country. Too much depended on this personal geography. There was danger in being nowhere. Joseph Brodsky, for example, was convicted of parasitism. Although perhaps the question “where are you?” and much deeper than it seems. And it refers to those beginnings, when in Ancient Rus' there was too much space, and not enough population. In such conditions, it is not difficult to get lost among forests, fields and rivers. And to understand where you are means to determine your self-identification and define your relationship with the world. In Europe, for example, it has always been crowded, and its inhabitants were forced to settle, land, build their lives in one place, and establish neighborly connections. (Where are you? - Yes, everything is in the same place as always, what a question.) Not so in Russia. In our country, if a person felt uncomfortable, he could move to the neighboring forest. Luckily there was plenty of space. It turned out".