Ducks, Vodka, and Sorrow
This title would probably make more sense if I regularly ate duck or ever drank vodka. Since it’s a thought predicated on a piece of Russian literature, however, the vodka and the unhappiness aren’t a total surprise.
There is a passage in Boris Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago describing a welcome home party for the titular character. He has just returned from his front-line medical duties in the war and the party is eating duck and drinking black-market vodka. Far from being a mirthful scene, Pasternak writes:
“But the saddest thing of all was that their party was a kind of betrayal. You could not imagine anyone in the houses across the street eating or drinking in the same way at the same time. Beyond the windows lay silent, dark, hungry Moscow. Its shops were empty, and as for game and vodka, people had even forgotten to think about such things. And so it turned out that only a life similar to the life of those around us, merging with it without a ripple, is genuine life, and that an unshared happiness is not happiness, so that duck and vodka, when they seem to be the only ones in town, are not even duck and vodka. And this was most vexing of all.”
Embedded in this haunting passage are two ideas worthy of our consideration. The first is that experiencing pleasure while others are suffering is vexing. The second is that “unshared happiness is not happiness.” One of the peculiar qualities of goodness, beauty, and happiness is that they achieve their proper fullness only when they’re shared. Dr. Zhivago needed to lower his personal standards to share in the lives of others, but the notion that genuine solidarity always requires a loss in the quality of life seems less than ideal. Zhivago needed to assimilate with those below his station in order to find happiness because he didn’t have sufficient sharable resources to bring others up to his level of comfort. Scarcity demanded that he join the others in the path toward a genuine life, rather than inviting them to join him.
The passage makes sense because there is a scarcity of ducks and vodka in that time and place. However, when we look at issues of scarcity in our current culture—toilet paper and bacon may come to mind—I believe that the real scarcity in the market of modern ideas is the lack of genuine hope and stability. It makes for a conflicted situation as a follower of Christ to live a deeply satisfying life while knowing that, “Outside the windows lay silent, dark, hungry, humanity.” When it comes to hope, the shops are empty. (This vexation is the motivation for evangelism, by the way.)
The difference is that the elements of my pleasure (faith, hope, love) are not scarce resources, like duck, or bacon; they are abundantly offered to all. I just happen to know where they come from. There are limitations on what I can provide, but there are no limits to the one to whom I can point. For those of you who feel this ‘vexation’ in your lives, the beginning of 1 John rings true:
“That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We write this to make our joy complete.”
Note the final line there: “We write this to make our joy complete.” Those with one duck in a hungry city can see that an unshared happiness is no happiness at all. Those of us with the Word of Life in a hungry world do our work for the glory of a Father with unlimited resources to make our joy complete. When the hunger is real, and there isn’t a scarcity of resources to meet the need, then the distribution is fun. Preach on!