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Depression? Give yourself an elephant!
My son was asked to read the story “The Girl and the Elephant” by Kuprin. A classic is a classic! It turns out that this wonderful story can be interpreted as a story about getting out of depression and restoring contact with yourself and life.
A girl in the family fell ill with an unknown disease. The doctor found no signs of illness, and the only prescription he could prescribe was to cheer her up.
However, it was a difficult task! The girl didn’t want anything, everything she loved didn’t make her happy, everything was boring. She had clearly lost contact with life, contact with herself.
And then one day she dreamed of an elephant. A real, live elephant. And she really wanted to see the elephant! She remembered how dad promised to take her to the menagerie. She told mom about this, mom told dad, and dad immediately went to the store and brought her a wind-up toy elephant. To which the girl just looked sadly and said — no.. This is not the same at all!
At first, dad, like any reasonable person in his place, assured her that bringing an elephant into the house was like getting the sun from the sky. But the girl was inexorable — of course, it is absolutely impossible to get the sun for sure, but an elephant is a completely different matter. And then dad, who of course loved his daughter very much and…
