Chicken Soup for the Soul

I Know You, You're Just Like Me! 
One of our closest friends is Stan Dale. Stan teaches a seminar on love 
and relationships called Sex, Love and Intimacy. Several years ago, in 
an effort to learn what the people in the Soviet Union were really like, 
he took 29 people to the Soviet Union for two weeks. When he wrote 
about his experiences in his newsletter, we were deeply touched by the 
following anecdote. 
While walking through a park in the industrial city of Kharkov, I 
spotted an old Russian veteran of World War II. They are easily 
identified by the medals and ribbons they still proudly display on their 
shirts and jackets. This is not an act of egotism. It is their country's way 
of honoring those who helped save Russia, even though 20 million 
Russians were killed by the Nazis. I went up to this old man sitting with 
his wife and said, "Druzhba i mir" (friendship and peace). The man 
looking at me as if in disbelief, took the button we had made for the trip 
and said "Friendship" in Russian and showed a map of the U.S. and the 
U.S.S.R. being held by loving hands, and said, 
"Americanski?" I replied, "Da, Americanski. Druzhba i mir." He 
clasped both my hands as if we were long lost brothers and repeated 
again, "Americanski!" This time there was recognition and love in his 
statement. 
For the next few minutes he and his wife spoke in Russian as if I 
understood every word, and I spoke English as if I knew he would 
understand. You know what? Neither of us understood a word, but we 
surely understood each other. We hugged, and laughed and cried, all the 
while saying, "Druzhba i mir, Americanski." "I love you, I am proud to 
be in your country, we do not want war. I love you!" 
After about five minutes we said good-bye, and the seven of us in our 
little group walked on. About 15 minutes later, some considerable 
distance on, this same old veteran caught up with us. He came up to me, 
took off his Order of Lenin medal (probably his most prized possession) 
and pinned it to my jacket. He then kissed me on the lips and gave me 
one of the warmest, most loving hugs I have ever received. Then we 
both cried, looked into each other's eyes for the longest time, and said, 
"Dossvedanya" (good-bye). 
The above story is symbolic of our entire "Citizen Diplomacy" trip to 
the Soviet Union. Every day we met and touched hundreds of people in 

---

every possible and impossible setting. Neither the Russians nor 
ourselves will ever be the same. There are now hundreds of school 
children from the three schools we visited who will not be quite so 
ready to think of Americans as people who want to "nuke" them. We 
danced, sang and played with children of every age, and then we 
hugged, kissed and shared presents. They gave us flowers, cakes, 
buttons, paintings, dolls, but most importantly, their hearts and open 
minds. 
More than once we were invited to be members of wedding parties, and 
no biological family member could have been more warmly accepted, 
greeted and feted than we were. We hugged, kissed, danced and drank 
champagne, schnapps and vodka with the bride and groom, as well as 
Momma and Poppa and the rest of the family. 
In Kursk, we were hosted by seven Russian families who volunteered to 
take us in for a wonderful evening of food, drink and conversation. Four 
hours later, none of us wanted to part. Our group now has a complete 
new family in Russia. 
The following night "our family" was feted by us at our hotel. The band 
played until almost midnight, and guess what? Once again we ate, 
drank, talked, danced and cried when it came time to say good-bye. We 
danced every dance as if we were passionate lovers, which is exactly 
what we were. 
I could go on forever about our experiences, and yet there would be no 
way to convey to you exactly how we felt. How would you feel when 
you arrived at your hotel in Moscow, if there were a telephone message 
waiting for you, written in Russian, from Mikhail Gorbachev's office 
saying he regretted he could not meet with you that weekend because he 
would be out of town, but instead he had arranged for your entire group 
to meet for two hours in a round-table discussion with about a half-
dozen members of the Central Committee? We had an extremely frank 
discussion about everything, including sex. 
How would you feel if more than a dozen old ladies, wearing 
babushkas, came down from the steps of their apartment buildings and 
hugged and kissed you? How would you feel when your guides, Tanya 
and Natasha, told you and the whole group that they had never seen 
anyone like you? And when we left, all 30 of us cried because we had 
fallen in love with these fabulous women, and they with us. Yes, how 
would you feel? Probably just like us. 

---

Each of us had our own experience, of course, but the collective 
experience bears out one thing for certain: The only way we are ever 
going to ensure peace on this planet is to adopt the entire world as "our 
family." We are going to have to hug them, and kiss them. And dance 
and play with them. And we are going to have to sit and talk and walk 
and cry with them. Because when we do, we'll be able to see that, 
indeed, everyone is beautiful, and we all complement each other so 
beautifully, and we would all be poorer without each other. Then the 
saying, "I know you, you're just like me!" will take on a mega-meaning 
of, "This is 'my family,' and I will stand by them no matter what!" 
Stan Dale 

---