The Russian avos' describes a type of philosophy, behavior or attitude, of a person who ignores possible problems or hassles and at the same time expects or hopes for no negative results or consequences...well, that is being hopeful isn’t it?...sounds like a lot of people I know and they have no idea what avos’ is...I suppose it is similar to hearing a noise in your car engine and turning up the radio loud enough so you can’t hear it anymore...it is an attitude that treats life as being unpredictable (which it can certainly be) and has the philosophy that the best one can do is count on good fortune...which isn’t always reliable...some claim it is a good philosophy to have while others do not think it is..."avos" is close in meaning to "hopefully" or "maybe" when talking of something that is hoped for but uncertain...when it is used as a noun, "avos" means something similar to "hit or miss", or "hope against hope"...the attitude of ‘avos’ is believed by many to be intrinsic to Russian character... just as is the notion of "sud'ba" which roughly translated means destiny of fate...it certainly sounds like the attitude a ‘happy-go-lucky’ person would have...some say that it’s a way out of taking responsibility for things and instead just placing everything that happens on the luck of the draw so to speak...it’s relying on fate to decide the outcomes of all things...and who’s to say that is wrong?...maybe all our planning and hard thought out ideas are all fruitless...it’s already all written in the stars so to speak, and even though we can make a million decisions or more in our lifetime, things will always end up decided by fate...and if fate is in charge, why worry about things for they will happen or not happen in accordance with our fate...in modern times, the term ‘avos’ is rarely used and the philosophy is not as widespread as it was once.
