Now me: I easily qualify for the most “special” category of people according to Jeremy Clarkson.
He must have said it ten fifteen years ago or maybe more. It was so clever and so true and I qualified so unequivocally that I never forgot the description. I’m still in that category, just a bit older now, and still more convinced of my honorary, by now, membership. So, I am a “white male, fifty (well, this may be out of date by now), I smoke and drink, I drive, I’m divorced, I have children and I always worked”. I’m the oldest of four children. My parents were teachers. I grew up in communist Eastern Europe and went to bed listening, with my father, to Radio Free Europe every night. I graduated with a top degree in Mechanical Engineering just before the collapse of communism. In 93 I moved to London where I graduated in computer science in 97. Now I live and work as a computer programmer in London. I am technically an emigrant. But I don’t feel an emigrant and I never felt it, ever. I feel English. Alright, by adoption. I don’t believe in multiculturalism. I don’t believe in preserving the culture of a community for the benefit of a few vane leaders. I am a fair capitalist who would employ people only if able to pay a fair wage. I love literature, philosophy, psychology, science, politics, conversation, I love my profession, football and I dance, I still do after 30 years of it and I’ll never stop.
My highest value – self-honesty, but with some of it I exercise the beautiful privilege of keeping it secret, or distribute it selectively. Most people don’t need to know. I decide who is allowed to know what. I have strong libertarian political views and believe in the individual. I believe in the right to benefit from the sweat of your own brow and in the responsibility to pay back for the opportunities and the support presented to you. I detest and cannot stand clever fools, hypocrites, lazy people, liars, thieves, the self-righteous and the saints. I believe that as long as you’re alive, nothing really matters. I thank my teacher for unveiling this secret to me when I was only 16. Life must give one the enthusiasm and the courage to be always doing something, to take calculated risks and move the world forward. I advocate meritocracy by words and deeds. I’ve seen my brother lined up together with friends, Kalashnikov in hand, ready to go to war. I know how it feels. I wanted to go with him but I was prevented. I would have gone anyway. In the end there was no war to go to. I feared for my life twice. Once a whole night I feared someone would come and shoot me and my whole family for our political views and actions. Second time, unsuspectingly I was manipulated into a four hour long mental torture session with an unknown man who wanted to persuade me to enter something sinister and dangerous, I begged for my life and in the end I’ve given up on it. Even thou I was told not to walk out because I do it at my own risk, I walked out in the dark and waited I’d be stabbed in the back any moment. The rush you get in that instant! It feels like you’re alight, burning inside and the heatwave gets out of you like an explosion, you feel it. Maybe that was my lucky day. But I won’t forget it ever. I know what it feels to give up on your life under strain. Nobody should go through that, ever.