Dear Diary,
“If you’re so smart – why are you so poor?” one of my relatives would ask me, not always with easy contempt. And indeed, I’d think, perhaps not so smart after all, since at that time my salary lasted only three out of four weeks of the month or even less. However, for a good while now I’ve firmly found the answer to this question. Because. Because I grew up on two words that during my formative years stood in for ten commandments, a constitution and a criminal code combined. The words “That’s so unfair!” Because if you look around carefully, you’ll see that the less sacred these two words are to a person, the better they live. And vice versa. The strangest thing about it is that looking at people who today hold some sway, wonder doesn’t leave you – after all, we all grew up in the same era. An era when doing something wrong, the classmate’s or playground friend’s voice from behind saying “Hey, but that’s so unfair!” would pour over you like a bucket of cold water and instantly force you to stop the started doing process. Where, how and why did they degenerate so?
I won’t hide it – honesty seriously trips you up on the journey through life. Sometimes you need to tell a client the final price for completed work and cold sweat pours – how can you ask nearly a hundred euros for three hours, somehow that’s unfair! Because for some reason I’m counting only the time spent pressing buttons, not valuing the long years during which I meticulously learned to press those buttons properly and the price of the buttons themselves (work equipment, workspace rental, electricity) in general. Thankfully, I have wonderful clients who always reassure me that I’m really not taking their last pair of pants and they don’t need enormous discounts either. But I still consider this a value and am not yet ready to part with this character trait of mine.
Why did this graphomaniac drivel pour out of me on this fine morning? Well, something snagged a colleague’s indignation in the public sphere that around here there’s a lot of promising but little of it being executed. There’s truth to it, I’ve myself encountered cases here and there where things were said to your face that, as it later turned out, weren’t even planned to be fulfilled. “But that’s so unfair,” something inside would exclaim, upon catching on. And then you realize that the person couldn’t care less about it. Just as, apparently, they couldn’t care less about the price they, without realizing it, pay for such behavior. And the price – isn’t small. It’s their reputation. It’s my respect and trust toward them. Poof – and it’s gone! I smile, I talk, I nod, but yesterday you were a person to me and today – a piece of sh*t. Because that’s how – fair! :-)
So that’s what I’d wish for up there, in those ministries. Common sense. Does it really pay in every case without exception to clench your reputation into a ball and stuff it up your a*s? Perhaps sometimes it’s more optimal to live with fewer promises but at least without losing face?
And in general, let’s not dismiss the possibility that conscience is our ticket to the amphitheater in the clouds, from which one day we’ll gleefully watch how those who built their happiness in this world with others’ money for a dozen years are now, down below, suffering eternal torment in hellish tar :-)
