I've heard the same thing from my clients plenty of times about the fear of leaving Russia. Even apart from clients, I've been told this personally more than once. Both relatives and friends, as well as acquaintances, have said it to me. The phrase goes like this: "Those I know who have left are unhappy". Usually, a couple of illustrations and examples follow this statement.
In such an informational vacuum, it's certainly difficult to even fantasize about leaving, let alone actually leaving. Who would want to willingly step into a guaranteed hell?
But I want to say that leaving or staying might not be a story about happiness at all. It could be about certain choices related to various meaningful matters.
I am not 100% sure about the duration and why I left. But I do know for sure that when it comes to questions of happiness, I am within my own possibilities and limits. I still correspond to my average life satisfaction coefficient. Maybe my happiness has even made a leap upwards. But not because where I was born is bad and where I am now is good. Because I have finally, without excuses or procrastination, "touched" what I secretly and timidly observed for several decades, considering it too bothersome or unrealizable to physically go and explore, to immerse myself in the subject of my interest, without postponing it until retirement (to the moment of retirement I had planned to become "more resourceful and secure" than now).
