Shadows of Surrender

One glass of wine, one shot of something, one cocktail of this, one of that, and then one of that. Life is too short not to enjoy the moment. The strange yet comforting music emanating from the speakers above. The view on the street below, a this, a that, a small, a big, a fast, a slow yet just a car. Multiple cars. Stopping at the light as the tram slides by. Filled with people heading to town. To party, to walk, to eat, to drink, to get absolutely and totally drunk.

It's cold outside, or is it? 5 degrees is surely cold? For Italy, yes, for Kyiv, not so much. Yet I'm neither there nor there, and it's a decent evening for where I am. The warm is gone, and the cold is yet to come. Sirens in the distance, horror of the paranoid and negative, indeed a murder or another nothingness to the less dramatic, probably a drunk guy dancing in the middle of the street yelling some woman's name.

The superficial politeness, the artificial warmth, the buffer from the outside world set by the waiter is welcomed on this cozy evening. Why must I always be aware of the hostility of the world? Of the sadness of people? Of my struggles and frustrations? For a few hours, I can pretend that nothing in this world can touch this place and myself in it. The ambient lights, the perfect walls, furniture, and floors. I look for a scratch, for damage, but all I see are the crumbs of the salt sticks my dog refuses to eat.

But it comes with a price. This escape can be costly; one must pay for it with hard cash, but what is money if not just another illusion? You don't spend it, and it adds up to be spent on things you don't want to spend it on. When you spend it, it's gone, but you've done something you wanted to do. All this focus on how to make it, how much to make, and so little talk on how to spend it. Bills and bills and bills. They will never stop, but to live to pay them is the tragedy of one who takes money too seriously.

Wars and calamities one should not take seriously for they're outside of our control, yet man-made creations we take with such seriousness and create a culture of lack and inadequacy. At the same time, we sweat worrying about things that do not require our worrying. Taxes, bills, rents, these will all be paid one way or another, yet day and night, we think about them as if the meaning of life is to make people we never met richer than ourselves.

And when it's time to say goodnight, we fight with ourselves over the tip for it's already expensive, not realising that the secret to more is to give. The secret to wealth is to spend. The secret to abundance is to be abundant. Something the miser will never understand as he's buried at the funeral of one.