What is philosophy? It is a rather difficult question for me. Maybe it is as difficult as the question who am I? It is because I feel I belong to something higher.

So, I was born on Sept. 16, 1981 in little Northern town Serov (Urals, Russia). Until the age of 10 I was a dedicated Communist, I believed that USSR is the best country in the world. I read Lenin and admired him, like all Soviet children. When my grandmother baptized me at the age of 5, my grandfather, who was a metallurgist and Communist leader at the factory, said that it is too bad and I hesitated over that fact for some years. But my doubts and my scruples over religion and my relation to Orthodoxy were always my inner experience. No one knows about them.

Even now, I do not attend Church, even though Church is rather popular in Russia. I do not bend the knee, I do not petition God, but I believe. He is like my father — Jew by nationality, but not Hebrew by belief — whom I never seen. I know that he exists and I feel him in my body and in my soul, but I have never seen him.

To live one needs to be certain about the sense of life, which comes from a higher experience. To live one must be certain about the eventual and absolute sense of one's life. To live one needs to be-lieve.

So, philosophy for me is religion, my be-lief. Philosophy is my life. Philosophy is what I am, because I make it. It is not only thinking, reading and writing. They say in Russia 'writing like breathing'. Philosophizing means to feel the world and its limits.

Philosophy means love of wisdom. For me philosophy is making delectation and love and gifting my delectation and love to people. It is my relation with people whom I love, and my way of breathing out amour to the entire world.

Philosophy for me is religion, that is my relation (re-ligio) with a higher sense of my life. This is my philosophy, this is my way.

Cordially yours,

Dmitry Olshansky

Nov. 25, 2001

Web site: http://olshansky.sitecity.ru