Ami Says

What have we traded for convenience and the price of cheap? Yet how upset do we get when the convenient is inconvenient and the cheap expensive? And I'm not referring to any intrinsic change to the convenience and price but rather that hiccup in the convenient that makes it all of a sudden so much more inconvenient than the intrinsically inconvenient things or that hiccup that makes the cheap more expensive than the intrinsically expensive. Free bank accounts but then prove your soul over three-...

The question is not if we tend to whore ourselves for money. The question is at what price? We all have a price. Many have a low price, and these people get judged the most. The ones with a high price are often beyond judgment, but there’s always a price. It is rare to find someone who is completely incorruptible. Corruption. Now that’s a strong word. Just because we all have a price doesn’t mean we’d do anything for that price. Show me someone who’s been paid their price and stood by values. T...

They say when you don’t defend yourself you’re guilty. When you keep silent you’re guilty. But what if you never cared to prove your innocence? What if what others think of you doesn’t matter to you? What if you think people are just stupid and make all the wrong stupid conclusions anyway? But of course, if others go and spread their stories about you, then they’ll be believed, for you’re not telling your story. But again, what if you don’t care? Then will you just be guilty? Isn’t it innocent ...

Before I boarded the flight, I felt he and his team were such snobs. They felt they ruled it all. They looked down on everyone. I secretly wished for his failure. When I saw that he and his team were being replaced, I felt compelled to shout out to him from the back of the private jet as they were denied entry and walked down the road in shame as if in a ritual of shame, but my voice wasn’t heard. Yet I exited the private jet onto the tarmac and headed towards a park of this nameless city wher...

All these things look so great and valuable. Well, that is as long as you can almost afford them. Once you can afford them with ease, they are less appealing. And when you’re completely broke, you also notice their imperfections. You notice how cheap the plastic is. How pointless these shapes and lines are. It’s beyond you why there are 20 different types of croissants. If you can buy 50, you look for one simple croissant. And if you can’t even buy one, you wonder about that one simple, slightl...

As the road runs along the side of the mountain, it gains elevation, and the world behind disappears into a valley of buildings, fog, and distant coast. The temperature decreases, and the surroundings become natural and wild. Across the deep valley, the same road can be seen passing through mirroring clusters of towns, all marked by the steeples of their churches. Occasionally, another vehicle passes by and disappears into a village's side road. One could perhaps say there are many regions in...

Someone tells you you're wrong. You know you're right. More people tell you you're wrong. Now you know you're wrong. Or do you? Or are you just avoiding conflict? Avoiding standing out? Against one, OK, but against many? Jesus, the hero of Christianity, would have been killed a thousand times throughout history. The threat against conformity is a serious one. The rebellion of tattoos, pink hair, and same-sex love is not a threat to conformity when it is part of conformity. The tattoo is only a ...

We all have our worries and fears—our bugs and programming. And it’s alright. It’s not about fixing or correcting others. It’s about figuring out how you work. What it is you want. Often, I say the why matters, but it doesn’t. The why is so that when things get tough, you still have direction. But maybe once things get tough, you’re okay with changing direction. What matters most is snapping out of this blanket experience: If people around me are sad, then I must be sad. If people around me hav...

My world has become so small. I have very little from the past in my life. Even long-term clients have vanished into the ashes of yesterday. Relationships. Love affairs. Friendships. All gone. And what of now? What friendships? What depth? I have my woman, and she’s great. Aren’t we like two lonely planets spinning in a vast, empty universe? I say I want to make money, but I don’t want to work. What weird oddity is that? My son, so close yet so far. War creating distances that would otherwise ...

Who cares to read what I write? Who cares to know my thoughts? Who cares what is with me? Why express myself? Why do we all want to express ourselves. Perhaps life is about perception and not expression. Sitting and taking in. Absorbing. Observing. Trying to understand without judging. But it all looks the same. The same looks. The same clothes. The same talk. Nothing profound? Should I be paying more attention? Or do I accept that what I’m seeking to perceive is not here? That what feelings ar...

A date with oneself. So crude. So needy. Why with yourself? Doesn’t the spotlight shine on you? Doesn’t the clientele fall into awkward silence? Perhaps in earlier years, but now loneliness or aloneness is no longer a diagnosis. So much discussion, but all it sounds like is noise. I can’t even discern two words. Too much chatter. I can’t discern emotion. Nor language. But surely, if I pay more attention, I can discern something. Yet I have no real desire to do so. What could I learn in a coffe...

The theory of elasticity is that everything grows and becomes smaller based on need. Meaning time, being elastic, can expand and contract depending on everything that needs to be done. For example, in winter, days are shorter, and there's an understanding that less can be done during daylight hours. However, time being elastic would mean that the same amount of things could be done during these shorter daylight hours as during the daylight hours of summer. Likewise, less can be done during the l...

A car has a price—or does it? What if it’s given to you? What if you won it? What if you rented it? What difference does it actually make if it’s in your name or not? When you say I need this amount of money to buy this and that car, aren’t you limiting yourself to one possibility? Ownership is so overrated. Owning a home is status…where and when? Twenty years ago? Having an expensive car is status? Where and when? Every luxury car can be leased for an affordable monthly payment, so it says lit...

If you want something you don't have, gratitude tricks your mind into believing you have it already. "Thank you for this" and "thank you for that." Are we thanking a God, an external force, the universe, or are we thanking our subconscious that helps us bring these things into existence? Does it even matter? With all the uncertainties, isn't it much easier to believe in a God than in a void—or worse yet, only our subconscious? Isn't it easier to converse with a creator than with our own mind? Bu...

A world without perception, without paying attention to those around – looks, non-looks, almost bumping into and almost not bumping, too close, not too close – all these things become irrelevant, like the trickle of a wild boar's piss on a thousand-year-old tree. Or perhaps this is wishful thinking. A voice directed toward you is ignored, not out of rudeness but indifference. A complaint, a praise – what does it matter? How does it change your being? Insulted, so what? Praised, so what? Does an...

The strength of the evil is the lack of consciousness, and the weakness of the good is their consciousness. But what if the good could be void of consciousness? What if whether I pursued evil or good would be indifferent to me, and I only chose one or the other because that is what I want to choose? Not because I feel compelled, not because I consider the consequences and the law, but because in this moment, I choose that instead of scheming, I shall create. Instead of making uglier, I shall bea...

Trump is bad, and Harris is good. Pepsi is good, and Coke is bad. Says who? Dumb people say this, and smart people say that, apparently. Mercedes is better than BMW. Samsung is better than Apple. Apple is better than a PC. The M-16 is better than the AK-47. The SU-57 is better than the F-35. The list goes on. But is it so? Well, it depends on the customer. When I served in the IDF, I was in a West-aligned country close to the U.S., so all our weapons were Western-made. Still, I tried a few time...

How hard is it not to call out to a God when in a foxhole? When suffering, when struggling? And then to boil in anger as the answer doesn’t come. As the blade enters your torso, as the warm blood soaks your clothes. As the call for help goes unanswered. How easily do you credit small events as celestial miracles? That car almost hit you, but you were saved by the universe. But then, who gave you the idea to cross the road without looking at that moment, and who put that unusually fast car right...

The idea is that you awake from the world of unremembered dreams and create the unfolding day. Most of this day is felt before experienced. Meaning we wake up, and as soon as we open our eyes, we start to feel. What we feel is made of remembering our yesterday and calculating our today. Both are passive and reactive but not proactive. Not realising that today can be seen as a reset, an opportunity to approach life with a fresh perspective—a blank canvas to paint on. And then the brush can use co...

During Russia's invasion of Ukraine, I was in Ukraine. In Kharkiv, 50 km from the border, it is a beautiful city, a remarkable city that is suffering a lot. When the artillery hit the buildings all around, everyone went to the basement. I kept sleeping in my bed, well, because I'm Israeli. I lived in Jerusalem on the 17th floor, and I would watch the rockets from Gaza over the horizon from my balcony as the sirens blared and defence systems engaged while sipping on my coffee or a glass of whisky...

A key to winning on the battlefield is to give the enemy the illusion that you are everywhere when you are not, to hold back and allow for some losses so that you can strike when the enemy is overextended, tired, too confident, and running out of supplies. There is great strategic benefit in allowing an enemy to enter deep into one’s territory, far away from their border, and keeping them there for a long time as they lose their support lines and confidence. Allowing for this while attacking the...

An obsession that life has meaning. An objective meaning that we can tap into. We can attach ourselves to this meaning or oppose ourselves. There are objective morals, good and bad, and we can choose how much of each we can be part of. And then we can rejoice about luck and shed tears about unfairness. But what if there is no objective meaning or purpose? What if there is no morality? Right or wrong? But what is is only what you choose to be. They'll tell you, but there are consequences for wro...

The customer who no longer feels anyone cares about them is a problem. This customer starts questioning every business relationship. "If so-and-so doesn't care about me, does my bank? Does my ISP? Does my insurance? Does my gym?" And then they look at those relationships: "It takes forever to get through to my Internet Service Provider," "The teller at my bank isn't so friendly," "My gym is overpriced." This spiral commences because one or two companies showed them they don't matter. Quite a rea...

What are standards, and who sets them? And why are they important? What is technological advancement without the advancement of the values infrastructure? Why do we mistake “more modern” with “better overall”? Is there perhaps a correlation? Maybe society cannot be more modern without advanced values. One of the symbols of a functional society is a police force. A country without a police force can never be considered modern. Yet does a modern society with Tesla police vehicles signal an advanc...

There is an important aspect of sales and business that is not discussed or even understood by many: the concept of letting go. If you’re in sales—or forget actual sales—anything that you want to close on. The girl, that car, the deal. You want it so badly, and there’s every reason why you should and will close this deal, whatever it is. Then it just falls apart into tiny little dust particles before your eyes, and you can’t comprehend what’s going on. It’s going against all logic. What the f#ck...

In a city of millions, one has but a handful of interactions, usually where some kind of financial transaction takes place. These interactions of few words are filled with silent emotion. It’s rare to exchange money without an exchange of emotions. Depending on who you are, where you come from, how you were raised, and your own insanity, the way you feel about money will vary. The way you feel about earning it will vary, and the way you feel about spending it will vary. I’m not talking about a r...

What is it that you fear? The dark? Bills? Your spouse? Your boss? The law? The taxman? Dogs? Spiders? I feared sharks for the longest time until I lived in Cape Town, where great whites roamed the beaches. Once they became real, I no longer worried about them as much. To say I no longer feared them would be an exaggeration, because my logic is based on survival chances in an encounter. While a bear, a pack of wolves, or a wild boar I could outrun, outsmart, or perhaps even fight and survive, f...

Growing up, the question that was constant in the mind of young men, teenage boys, and even into adulthood was, "What do women want?" As a teenage boy, it baffles you, but by the time you become a man in his 30s, you just accept the situation of never quite knowing what women want. But lately, I hear the question "What do men want?" a lot, which is an interesting development with a simple answer: to be appreciated. That's all men want. BTW, it's also what women want. Many women think men want ...

The more we look for friendships, the lonelier we are. The more we look for family, the lonelier we are. The more we look for success and money, the lonelier we are. These feelings of loneliness that we so define and dread, questioning as part of our inefficiency or lack of value, are only such because of our definition of them. A life without being drained by "friends" and "family" is a better life in every sense. Not having to suffer relatives and their drama, not having to bail out friends f...

If you're writing for others, it’s no different than taking pictures for others. One might argue: what is writing worth if not for the appreciation of others? But is that what motivated artists to create their great art? Surely, if it was, they failed, as many only reached fame after their deaths. So, is the motivation for posthumous fame? Isn’t that sad? Or what if it’s not about others, but about the self—a desire to express oneself, something to say that must be said for oneself? As an ape t...