Emerging from the bottom of life settled in the middle of Labanoras: Žymantas met the love of life cutting firewood.

The Žymantas family, located in the middle of the forest with three children, is convinced that they enjoy the true quality of life here and do not miss the hustle and bustle of the city.

Two of the family’s children are already of school age and were previously conveniently transported to school in Švenčionėliai by special bus. After quarantining the children at home, Žymantas is only happy: “I’ll tell you a secret: when the quarantine started, our family got very close. The children started sleeping a lot more because they didn’t have to get up early and rush to school and eat better. I started paying a lot more attention to them, so we built a very strong connection between us. The children are also very happy with distance education and say that they no longer want to go to school. And since they continue to attend soccer training, they don’t miss out on social life. “

Dreaded in pursuit of happiness

Surrounded by forests, where the family now lives, the family was first settled by Žymantas’ life partner, Milda. “My beloved has been living here for eighteen years, then she and her first husband sold an apartment in Vilnius and bought a house in the center of Labanoras. Around the same time, when I was younger, I moved with my parents to live in a town near Labanoras. So we moved to that forest at the same time, but we were still separated, “says the interlocutor.

Before living together, the two of them experienced many things individually. The woman divorced and soon buried her first husband and was therefore left alone with two children on a remote farm. At that moment, Žymantas traveled towards her by a very winding road: he had started a business, he had thrown it away, he traveled the world, he went to jail, he did informal work until he finally reached Milda’s yard.

“I was a recluse. I had a large backpack, a machete, a knife, a packet of buckwheat, and so much was enough for me to live happily in the forest. I felt completely immersed in nature and traveled to the people who live nearby to offer my help with various agricultural jobs. I considered myself a professional lumberjack, I could cut them with both hands ”, he laughs when he remembers.

The best, according to Žymantas, during that period of life was the freedom to do only what one wants and the complete isolation from the social world: the man did not have a telephone or use other technologies. Having learned to focus on himself in this way, says the interlocutor, he discovered total peace and saw that nothing else was missing.

In the past, the man had started his own business: he had a car repair shop, he lived like many, but he realized that the inner emptiness did not give him peace of mind. Then everything was launched and traveled to Europe. Žymantas says it was the best decision he made at the time and he has done it a couple of times. As they built, they gained the necessary experience and made many new friends.

“I looked so wide that I saw that people cannot live, cannot be in harmony with nature. I am ashamed that a person needs to consume a lot to feel happy. I began to gnaw at my conscience that we were oppressing our planet in this way. That started with myself, I gave up the car, the phone, everything I could and left ”, says the interlocutor.

Got to the bottom of life

Žymantas does not hide that such thoughts were inspired by an inevitable misfortune. According to the man, he had reached the end of his life, even had to go to jail, and had not seen a brighter prospect for some time.

“I have been blind in one eye since I was born, so I was often ridiculed and constantly involved in fights. I had been in the spotlight of the police since I was fourteen. I finally got into the criminal world, the minor robberies, drugs started, it was the grass merchant who caught me and planted me for a couple of years thinking about life.

When I was arrested, it was the biggest pot of my life: I lost my job, I had no money, I no longer agreed with my parents. Everything looked black, I tried to kill myself. And then I resisted that bottom. After half a year in prison without alcohol, without drugs, my mind cleared. I started exercising, reading books, and seeing good things. This May I will be 13 years old, when I am trying to get up, ”says Žymantas openly.

While in prison, he got married; more precisely, as he says, he wrote about longer dates. Later, when he was released, he divorced, because he himself was able to change his thoughts and habits, and the woman did not. For a long time after this relationship, no other party had believed and even begun to believe that there was no point in “multiplying and growing that consumer society” at all.

I came to help the farm, I kept everything

Žymantas met his beloved Milda, as he gently calls himself, only after long solitary wanderings. The history of the couple is like a destiny. That should have been the case, says the interlocutor.

“I once worked with an acquaintance and she offered me to go to the choir to sing Lithuanian contract songs. I thought maybe there would be nothing at all, so I went, sang, I liked it. Milda was and still is the leader of this choir. I remember looking at her, a nice woman, I thought about how she lives here alone with her children. It even occurred to me that with such a woman I could start a family. I offered my help on the farm: chopping wood, bringing hay, removing manure. There was a purely labor relationship. However, I got caught up in such things as she reads fairy tales to her children before bed, sings, goes out into nature and raises goats, ”she shares her memories.

So slowly they became friends. More seriously, things moved on during the man’s 29th birthday. “I asked him if I could celebrate my birthday here,” he says, of course. We made a fire, started singing and then I felt such a strong closeness. That’s how I stayed with Milda from that birthday, it can be said that I received gifts for the family and the house ”, laughs the interlocutor.

The farm itself, as he says, also touched the heart. The man, who had lost a lot of space before that and came to a single farm in the middle of the Labanoras forest, immediately liked the place, he says he thought he could live happily here: “The whole house is covered with forests, solution. In deciding to stay, I was guided purely by memory. I just felt that both the woman would be good to me and the house would fit. It took so many wrong trips to finally find my true path. “

Share the lessons of sustainable living

The interlocutor laughs and says that the Negro has not fanatically fallen into any philosophy. Although he lives in the distance, in the middle of the forest, he has all the comforts of the modern world and is simply happy to be able to breathe fresh air while living surrounded by nature. They do not feel isolated here, when it was still possible, they were often visited by friends, both from other parts of Lithuania and abroad. In addition, the couple, who symbolically shared their common activity, which they are doing in black, called “Labas noras”, organized educational events in their village, which brought together several hundred people.

“Then we just realized. There is no time to be bored. When the quarantine is over, we will set up camps for families again. In them we get acquainted with the ancient Lithuanian crafts, we invite you to celebrate festivals like Žolinė, Rasas. Milda is an ethnologist by training. Sing, turn, weave. At that moment, I fell into yoga. If Milda cares about the outside world, then I am more about internal self-development, “says Žymantas.

Currently, a skilled man is building event space in his home and hopes to make the most of those events in the future. And so far, after the quarantine has stopped this family business, the man has discovered another activity – inviting him to personal consultations, where he teaches how to live in harmony as a couple.

“I learned from my parenting relationship how not to do it to agree in harmony. As a result, my current relationship is simply amazing. Mudu and Milda are not even married because we don’t need any kind of paper to show our love. I just adore her, ”he says openly.

Sharing the secrets of a discovered sustainable life has now become a source of livelihood for one man. “At first I announced that I would consult for certain amounts, but I did not like it either, and it seemed to the clients that they might not be able to pay that much. Then I presented my inquiries as gifts, I said that you can pay how someone feels. And the most interesting thing is that people began to thank even more kindly ”, the man opens.

Rejoicing in the new activity, he says that the quarantine that has spread throughout the world at large has only brought advantages for his family. “The day we announced the quarantine, life began to boil with us. We no longer had to drive to town, because everything was closed there, so we concentrated all our work on building the house in the yard. We began to pay much more attention to our home, to our family, so we began to prosper. We all get closer, it seems as if we all meet again. So, unlike most people in the world, the quarantine has only had a positive effect on us, ”he says.

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The Crisis Management Center (Antakalnio St. 97, Vilnius, www.krizesiveikimas.lt) has mental health specialists on call, with whom you can consult upon arrival or via Skype without prior registration and free of charge. On-call psychologists will be available Monday through Friday from 4 pm to 8 pm, Saturday from 12 pm to 4 pm. Working hours: I, III, V 16.00–20.00 All additional information – on the page www.klausau.lt Assistance to relatives of suicides: self-help group, frequently asked questions, literature and other useful information on the page artimiems.lt Division of Child and Adolescent Crisis Intervention. Open 24 hours a day. (8-5) 275 75 64.