Yeah. This is how things work in my life. I start reading Dostoyevsky, and then everywhere I turn, there's Dostoyevsky. For instance, Brain Pickings has a morning post about him. Never fails. I've also started wearing my "Russian style" hat. I just picked it up, put it on unconsciously. My friend took one look and said, "Russian." Yes. I am so suggestible. And there are invisible strings connecting everything in the Universe. That's what they say.
I'm thinking of having borscht for lunch. Hah!
Dostoyevsky faced the firing squad, he looked into the abyss of an early death by execution, and then was pardoned and sent to Siberia. Reborn. In a letter to his brother, Dostoyevsky pours his heart out, and his new born knowledge:
"Brother! I’m not despondent and I haven’t lost heart. Life is everywhere, life is in us ourselves, not outside. There will be people by my side, and to be a human being among people and to remain one forever, no matter in what circumstances, not to grow despondent and not to lose heart — that’s what life is all about, that’s its task. I have come to recognize that. The idea has entered my flesh and blood… The head that created, lived the higher life of art, that recognized and grew accustomed to the higher demands of the spirit, that head has already been cut from my shoulders… But there remain in me a heart and the same flesh and blood that can also love, and suffer, and pity, and remember, and that’s life, too!"- F.D.