No money, no happiness

After a walk from the hospital back to his house this afternoon, I stood in the street and spoke with Anatol awhile before heading home. He told me about his huge collection of medals, awards, and coins from before the Soviet times that he has picked up over the years (and wants to sell because now he has too many... so let me know if you're interested). Anyways, I continued my "Pursuit of Happiness" project and asked him how he finds happiness in Moldova and in life in general. Unfortunately his response wasn't quite what I expected (even though I did get a great smile out of him).

There is no happiness in life without money. If you don't have money, you can't have food. If you don't have food, you don't have energy.

So I asked him about love and family.

Love? What is love. Love comes for two days and then it passes and the person you thought you loved at one time goes to another country to work. But if you don't have food to eat, you don't have energy, and if you don't have energy, no sex. So no happiness.

Ahhh ok. It all makes sense now. #men. (Thank you Twitter. I really don't get the hashes and @ signs at everything else, but it seems to work here).