Alexandr Korol

Then we’ll tell you the next one.” I finish it, and they say, “Next is this one.” I say, “Okay, but what for?” Again: “Finish it, and then we’ll tell you.” You see? And on one hand, I understand — this is actually how my thinking works, this is my logic. That’s exactly how I think myself when I interact with people at work. How can I explain it? That step-by-step segmentation is very important. That is, if I tell someone that they need to, say, sew T-shirts for me at their factory, I know that if I tell them I want to order them from them but also that I’ll be ordering from China too, and that in the end I won’t even be selling them, then if they know all of that upfront, their attitude toward the task will be distorted. If I just say, “Do it, I need these T-shirts,” they’ll put in the effort. But if they already know I won’t be selling them, it’s like they won’t try as hard or won’t be in a rush. Seriously, it immediately affects a person’s psyche, even their attitude and mood. It’s the same thing as not telling someone in advance how long we’ll walk in the park. Because if I say we’ll walk in the park for 10 hours, they’ll already start dreading it. Or if I say we’ll walk for 30 minutes but the trip there takes two hours, again they won’t want to go. So I just say we’re going to the park, and then we’ll see how it goes. You can’t and shouldn’t know everything in advance — what for? Just imagine if I knew in advance, while writing a book, whether it would be read or not. So what? So I’d get disappointed and stop believing in the book and not write it? If I were told in advance it wouldn’t be read. Or what if “they,” that voice or whoever, told me my strongest book would be the fifth — then what? I wouldn’t write the first, second, third, or fourth? I’d only focus on the fifth. You see? That is, these “they,” the ones “up there,” they know psychology, they understand human factors, the human psyche. And they take that into account when interacting with me. And, you see, maybe it will turn out that I die, and all of this ends up going to my grandson. Or maybe I’ll have to give it all away to someone. Or maybe the government will take it from me. And if “they,” those above, had told me that from the start, do you think I would have invested all my money into Karelia, devoted all my soul and time to it? No. You understand? Or maybe the opposite — maybe if “they” told me I would later find diamonds and become the richest person in the world — do you think I’d still be working hard now to earn money? No, I’d already be thinking only about diamonds. It’s a human factor thing, you see? So back then, they told me my first task was: I must not build anything new, that I need to restore the old structures in the exact