Photo | Jonas Hafner | THIS IS CAPTIVATING — THANKS!

Words should not be an end in themselves, they are purveyors of things which far exceed them. They are messengers of thoughts— therein lies their power.

Writing has a bad reputation. Not with everyone, but I frequently come across people who view it as a torturous task, a thing to be done only when it cannot be avoided. But come on guys, writing is no more dreadful than talking.

At the core, writing is based the same principles as talking. It all starts in the mind. You have an idea, a thought, a question, and you want to communicate it. When the thing being communicated sparks your own interest, moves you, awakens an emotion, enlightens the mind, tells a story, proves a point, settles a strife, or kindles a fire– communicating it is easy. Whether voice or pen, the thing will flow out of you.

Having to “write” when you have nothing to share is a problem just like having to give a speech on a topic you know nothing about. This where people run into the biggest writing problem, they want to write for the sake of writing, but can’t figure out what to share.

What to Write About

When choosing a topic, choose something that moves you first because your words can only move your reader to the degree that they move you as the writer. The same thing happens in conversation. The story being told is interesting to us as listeners only to the degree that it interests the speaker.

I often catch myself being delighted by the most unexcitable topics only because the person speaking shows genuine interest in what they are talking about. I’m not into golf, but there were times when the person, delectably describing a golfing session, sweeps me away. Not because golf suddenly becomes fascinating, but because the passion in that person strikes that chord in me. In the end, it is not the golf that interests, but the emotion behind golf.

Sometimes people have bad associations with writing carried over from their school years when they were obligated to write essays about things they were not interested in and topics they knew nothing about. As they wrote the un-writable they bored themselves to death. The next step was to proofread, the higher of torture. Here the problem is not the writing, but the lack of interest. Ever hear a foreigner communicate beautifully with virtually no vocabulary? Regardless of whether pen or voice is your medium, when you have something to say, you will find a way to say it. And when you have nothing to say, even the most elaborate vocabulary won’t help you.

Experience First, Write Later

Don’t think about writing. Think about living, learning, researching, and when your mind fills to the brim, it will pour words with beautiful fluency.

Words cannot be an end in themselves, for when thoughts are not attached to them, they are only interesting as a thesaurus. But when they act as messengers of thoughts, they take on the nature of the thoughts you are conveying. In short, word power is thought power.

Respect for Time is the link that ties all highly effective people together—  they capture seconds and minutes effectively to make them matter. 

White sand, sunshine, and seagulls— a Florida winter is made of all these things. I lived here for years, and this should feel normal, yet after being away, the process of leaving Portland mid-winter and stepping into a Floridian summer is strange.

I gave up trying to put my finger on why it doesn’t feel normal to wear a bikini when most people are somewhere out there bundled in scarves. Instead, I am spending my time focusing on more evocative matters.

Today I was amused by my brother. He is much younger, but the gap in age does not stifle his ability to stride ahead of me in many ways.  He is always teaching me things, opening my eyes to things I have looked at for so long that I have ceased to see them.   My current lesson is maximizing the string of current moments which create the span of life. Time maximization.  His favorite quotes revolve around the notion that “time is everything.”

Time is such a weird concept and he’s always showing charts to help visualize time more objectively— twenty-four-hour pie charts outlining circadian rhythms, hours of peak alertness and so on.  Recently, he came across a chart which outlines the ninety-year life span of a person by depicting each week with a little square.  Ninety years may seem like forever, but seeing the years broken down into quickly passing weeks really illuminates the value of each day.

I admire the urgency with which he lives and in order to fit his aspirations into his life, he must. He is always steadfast in his desire to not waste time.  By taking advantage of his spare moments in high-school classes, he developed his first business. This seems to be the link that ties all highly effective types together— they maximize their moments because for them, time is everything and when I consider it, it is.

Every highly effective person that I have ever met has a deep respect for Time— they maximize their moments because, for them, time is everything and when I really think about it, life is made up of seconds, minutes, and hours just like this.

Photo: Evergreen Meadows Memorial Cemetery | October 18, 2014

By trade, he was a merchant.  Not of exotic spices and fine silks, but of iPhones and motorcycles.  My brother once came up with that term for lack of better explanation of what he does exactly.  It suits.

He recently asked me what the cumbersome thing leaning against the wall of my apartment was.  It was a stowaway bed.  I bought it for temporary use, used it for a week, and now I had no idea what do with it.  Just sell it, he said as if I knew how or where to sell such an odd commodity.  Within the few moments that it took for me to prepare his tea, he snapped a picture, posted it and within a few days the thing sold— double what I paid for it.  He had a knack for that sort of thing.

There were various rumors circulating about how his tragedy transpired, but after investigation, this is how the theory goes: 

He had a brand new, sold-out everywhere, unlocked, iPhone 6 Plus + 64GB  listed for $1300.  A potential buyer scheduled to meet him at a park on Saturday night.  Gena, being the fearless sort, did not question the strange location and drove to Mount Talbert Park.  The entrance was gated and closed at this late hour, so he parked in the area before the gate and at 9:55pm pm on Saturday, October 11, 2014 he texted the person confirming his location.

By 10:15 pm the accident occurred.  In the twenty minutes between his last text and the accident, a lot took place.  It appears that the person, with whom he met, pulled him by the collar and knifed him twice in the chest.  The cuts were not deep enough to kill him yet produced blood.  He was very strong in many ways, but when it came to the sight of his own blood, even the bleeding of a small wound caused Gena to grow faint.

A Kaiser Permanente Hospital is located about four miles away.  Gena was well acquainted with the area and sped wildly through back-roads to get help. Witnesses confirm that he drove very fast and barely stopped at the stop lights along his route, he even went against traffic near the entrance.

Upon entering the hospital, a turn divides the road with a cement barrier leading toward the Emergency Room parking lot.  It was raining, it was dark and Gena was speeding— through his eyes everything was a blur.  When entering this part of Kaiser’s parking, even on a clear day, it seems as if the parking lot may be reached by driving straight when looking slightly above the barrier and with all the obstacles of the moment he either did not have time to make the turn or overlooked it entirely and crashed into the cement divider.  He was not buckled.

A few doctors were out on break, saw it happen and rushed to him directly. They spent two hours trying to revive him, but the impact of the air bag on his unbuckled body, the crash and his previous cuts were too much.  His aorta was punctured and the loss of blood could not be stopped. And thus he died— rushing to save his life.

After further investigation of tread marks, previous conversations and the reports of eye witnesses, this is the account of the tragic death of Genadiy Y. Kondratyuk.

The suspect was not identified and the case is closed.

THANK YOU:

For all the generous memorial contributions: Memorial Fundraiser.

To his close friends, especially Nick and Dmitry Kuzmenko, for the investigative efforts.

And to every single person who paid their final respects.

A recording of the memorial service, held on October 17th 2014, may be viewed at: Memorial Service. 

Read it in Russian —  for Тая Омелченко’s translation please go to: slavicfamily.org

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