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Not everyone knows that the Galaxy Prize has its own remarkable history, and the Galaxy statuette harbors within itself a small piece of the Universe! The history of the prize was presented in one of Company President Dmitry Buriak’s Letters to Distributors.
“This happened at the Neskuchnyi Garden in Moscow, where the Fersman Memorial Mineralogical Museum is located. Then, at age 15, I was a frequent visitor at the museum, because by then mineralogy had become my main interest, almost an obsession, which subsequently led me to the Moscow Geological Exploration Institute. But I had studied rocks with enormous enthusiasm even when I was younger than that. They fascinated me with their beauty, which hid the riddles of the many millions of years of our planet’s history.
“Aside from earthly minerals, there was one more collection that excited my imagination – a collection of meteorites. I would stand before those unearthly exhibits a long time, dreaming of far-off worlds and of future discoveries. Once I came to the museum with a friend of mine. As it probably is with many boys, our common passion was books about journeys and adventures, treasures and distant countries. And so, obsessed with the idea of searching for treasure, we would peer at the museum exhibits, experiencing the intoxicating force of the romance of travel even more sharply. The beating of our hearts would quicken. And that was when we hatched a secret plan. An escape plan.
”At the time, I was involved with a mineralogical club and my supervisor that summer was on an expedition in Kazakhstan. We decided to go there. But we needed money in order to get to Kazakhstan. Naturally, our parents didn’t even want to hear about any travels. Then we resolved to make our escape. And so, at night, putting what I would need most in a backpack, I left home. Just before that, I wrote a letter to my mom. I asked her not to worry, and I explained my act by saying that I was already a grownup and I needed to prove my right to be called a man.
”Our first destination was Volgograd. We got there as stowaways on the third berth in a car in third class, since money was awfully tight. In Volgograd, we contracted to unload watermelons in order to earn a little money and travel further. But the money we earned was only enough to get half way there, so we got off the merchant vessel in Chornyi Yar.
We didn’t know what to do next. We had neither food nor money left. And then we decided to stay at a small island of the kind of which there are many in those parts of the Volga. We swam to the island and stayed there a whole month as real savages, after which we returned to the “mainland,” where we were lucky to find our first worthwhile work. As a result, we became, as it seemed to us, genuine men of wealth. At any rate, our wealth was enough to buy tickets and continue our journey to Kazakhstan, where the leader of our geological club, Oleg Belyayev, awaited us. From Karaganda we made our way to Bayan-Aul, where the expedition was at work. There we set to work helping perform geodesic surveys.”
* * * * * * *
”Once, somewhere near the end of the summer, an unexpected and amazing encounter took place. I had wandered far from where our expedition had its camp, and there, among low crags, I suddenly saw a solitary figure. It was a motionless black silhouette majestically towering in front of me on the background of a blazing sunset. It seemed to me that it was some kind of ancient stone statue or a weirdly shaped crag. Its contours shimmered in the streams of air rising from rocks that had gotten red-hot during the heat of the day.
“But then I saw that the steppe wind was blowing the long, gray strands on the head of a man standing there still as a stone sculpture. Coming closer, I realized that the old man was looking not at the sun going down on the horizon, but right at me. That sight shook me so much that it suddenly seemed to me that in the whole world there was not and never had been either the steppe, or time, or even me myself – nothing at all except those eternal crags, the huge red sun, and that mysterious old man.
“Not getting up the resolve to tear my gaze away, as if fearing to scare that fantastic vision away, I nevertheless took a step forward. Then another. And, finally, as if satisfied of the reality of what was happening, I now moved more boldly toward the foot of one of the crags. As I came closer, the ancient seemed to tower over me more and more, and now behind him was not the sun, but a deep sky such as can probably only be seen in these places far from worldly hustle and bustle.
“I don’t know whether it only seemed to be or whether in fact the old man had with an invisible motion of his arm invited me to climb up to him, but, never tearing my gaze from him, I quickly scrambled up the crag and soon found myself on a small stone platform next to the mysterious man.
“For a time, we, not saying a word to each other, followed the sun with our gazes. I felt myself to be standing at the top of the world. That top of the world slowly sank into the evening dusk, and it seemed to be the last little island in the midst of an enormous ocean. And that ocean, as if following our example, also froze, reverently seeing off the last rays of a sun that had already sunk in some distant and incomprehensible cosmic space. And then I sensed that if there is a higher wisdom on earth, it is encompassed in that kind of silent contemplation of the eternal; and that, I thought, cannot be expressed by any words.
“I don’t remember how long we stood on the crag, never uttering a sound. I came to when a falling star suddenly streaked across the now darkened sky. Before I could think about it, the old man broke the ringing silence, saying, ‘Let’s go,’ and only at that moment did I get a proper look at him. He wasn’t so very tall, very thin, and incredibly old. Perhaps there wouldn’t have been anything noteworthy in his appearance if it weren’t for two details. Despite his venerable age, he had preserved a posture as erect as that the Japanese kendo masters have. It was as if his posture expressed an invincible will and pride for the years he had lived. But his eyes amazed me even more: they looked at me penetratingly and improbably youthfully from the depths of a face carved in wrinkles and framed by long and absolutely white hair. There was such astounding depth in those eyes that it seemed to me that the old man was seeing me through and through.
“As if he were a wraith, the old man began silently descending the crag, and I followed him. Soon we found ourselves alongside a tiny stone house with a low semi-circular entrance over which a piece of thin felt was pulled. We entered the old man’s dwelling, and he lit the brushwood in the small hearth. The light from the flame snatched from the darkness walls daubed in clay that was cracked with age. Although the old man hadn’t asked me about it, I told him that I was working nearby with a geological crew. For some reason I felt enormous trust in him, and I wanted to share the story of my journey with him. But the old man probably saw that I was tired and hungry. He treated me to bread, and I felt that I had to thank him no matter what, although I had neither money nor any other kind of valuable with me. My only ‘property’ was a small folding knife in a canvas sheath, and the knife had accompanied me like a talisman from the very beginning of my journey. I held the knife out to the old man.
“He accepted it carefully, but at the same time continued looking at me as intently as before. We said nothing for awhile. Then he began talking. He told me his family’s story. It turned out that some time long ago in these parts, while he was still a boy, his grandfather had worked at one of the English copper pits. And once, digging around in the ore, he became exhausted and, edging his way out of the deep hole and hiding behind a large boulder, he fell to his knees and then to the ground and closed his eyes, sinking into sleep.
“After a time he came to, and his gaze struck a small object. It was a strange-looking uneven black stone the size of a large egg. That was what he called his find afterwards – kara alma, that is, “black apple” in Kazakh. Never before and never afterwards did he see anything like it.
“He hid his find under a boulder, and took it home in the evening. When it came time to die many years later, the only thing this poor man passed on to his son, that is, the father of the old man I had met, was that mysterious black stone. And, passing from life, he said that this stone was a special omen, and some time it should end up in the hands of a worthy person. That person would come from afar, and until then the family should carefully keep the stone. But he didn’t say who that person from afar would be or how he could be recognized.
“A generation later, the stone wound up with the old man in whose house I now found myself. His father also gave him this family relic when he was in deep old age, saying that many people would cross this land, but the heart would indicate exactly to whom the omen belonged. It was long after this that the old man who told me the amazing story of his family that night learned from geologists who accidently wandered into his hut that the stone was a meteorite.
“Listening to his story, I thought that those geologists must have taken the find with them, but then the old man suddenly stretched out his hand to me, and in it I saw that very same black stone. ‘Take it,’ the old man said, as if placing a period at the end of his story. For awhile I couldn’t get up the resolve to touch the stone and looked inquiringly at the now silent narrator. Then he took my hand and, giving a barely noticeable nod, placed in it the unexpectedly heavy and, as it seemed to me, hot meteorite. I looked at him inquiringly, but he, as if in answer to my silent question, uttered one and only one word: ‘Altruist.’
To be honest, I didn’t know then what the word meant, although its scholarly ring somehow didn’t tally with the image of an old man in the far-off Kazakh steppe. It seemed to me that an ‘altruist’ was something like a ‘man of the future,’ but I didn’t understand what that had to do with me.
“Years passed after that incident, and I returned to those parts many more times as a student, but that story faded from my memory totally, as if it had decided to remain in that youth so distant and full of amazing adventures. The meteorite remained in the small locker where my collection of minerals was kept. And many long years passed before I again recalled that amazing gift. But talk of that lies ahead. At the time I returned to my habitual city life. Summer was coming to an end. And in general my youth was ending.
“My subsequent life – by the usual standards – was taking shape very successfully. I completed my studies, did my service in the military, and worked hard. It seemed to me I was certainly astride Lady Luck, now and forever. New opportunities came my way one after another, and I tried to take advantage of every one of them with furious energy, climbing higher and higher up the ladder of success on which were fixed the covetous gazes of many who remained far below, at its very foot. And the higher I climbed, the more successful my life seemed to me, and I thought that it belonged to me alone and that it was the result of my own achievements. At the end of the 1980s, when the opportunity appeared, I took up business in serious, and I earned my first million in 1991. At the time I had no notion that I only had several years left of a life like that.
“I was in a car accident in 1995. I had a spinal fracture. In total despair, I saw how my whole life had broken in two, and I felt myself to be a man without a future. Everything that had been in my hands had disappeared in a single instant, had dissolved like an illusion that I had taken for reality and thought eternal. How pitiful and unneeded everything suddenly seemed that I had dedicated years of my life to and that had made me want more than I already had. They say that many have lost their health trying to earn as much money as they can, and then have lost all their money trying to get their health back.
“But my enforced inactivity contained something important within it, namely the opportunity, probably for the first time in many years, to be one-on-one with my own self and to ponder deeply what my life had been hitherto. Today I have every right to say, following William Faulkner, that, ‘In solitude we come to understand that to be is more important than to have, and that we are more than the results of our efforts. In solitude, we discover for ourselves that our life is not property that needs to be protected, but a gift that we need to share with others.’
“Fate always gives everybody a second chance. I, too, was given a second chance. Rendered motionless and helpless, I lay in the hospital bed and leafed through the pages of my memory. And like the falling star that had long ago streaked over my head across the bottomless August night of Kazakhstan, the spark of hope ignited in my consciousness. And with it came the realization that the thing of greatest value in a person’s life is his health. I also became aware that health is a responsibility, too. A responsibility to oneself and to the people near and dear to you. If you live only for your own sake, forgetting about others, then sooner or later life loses interest in you and simply turns away from you. To be responsible means to know how to give of yourself to others – your time, your love, and your knowledge.
“And then I recalled the old man and his gift, which had been passed on from generation to generation in his family and which had later wound up with me. And I came to understand the meaning of that omen: the meteorite was a part of the boundless cosmos. It couldn’t be taken possession of. The only thing that could be done with it was to give it to others. And that was the way my personal philosophy was born. It didn’t have a name then, but life itself forced me to make my personal choice – the Whole Health Option. And when our Company was born a year later, the decision came to me – to arrange it so that the meteorite once given to me would continue on its celestial way, becoming a part of the reward handed to our best people.
“Now you understand: whatever the Company may hand you – a reward, knowledge, opportunities, health, a check – the Company is handing you a responsibility first of all. Because the higher your social status, the more knowledge and opportunities you have, the better off you are materially, the stronger you are physically, the more you meet the Vision standard. You become the Company’s image, and its lofty goals and noble mission become your life’s cause. That is a very great responsibility. Handing you that responsibility, the Company hands you your main opportunity – the opportunity to actualize within yourself man’s highest mission.
Remember how Antoine de Saint-Exupéry had it: ‘To be a person literally means the same thing as to bear responsibility. It means to experience shame at the sight of what seems to be undeserved misfortune. It means to take pride in the victories of your comrades. It means that when you lay a stone that you have a sense that you are participating in building the universe.’ Don’t forget that.”
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