journal.coffee

There are times I feel like this world is not as great as the pitch made it out to be, that the marketing was off, and if I must say, it was deceitful. The poets were all selling lies and snake oil. There was so much that was promised, and it seems little of what was promised is here. And no matter how far you walk away from trouble, it seems to always be in the line of sight. But then, I remember how we must keep walking. I once read research that said the human body was designed to walk. And my first question was: to where? Then, it occurred to me that the first humans walked to nowhere in particular. It occurred to me how it was the start of civilisation: walking. But what use is walking when we cannot see where we’re going? Even so, we must keep walking. Each step we take makes our ancestors smile. “They have not forgotten the greatest lesson, even after all this time,” they may say to each other in languages we won’t even understand today.

And so, for all my complaints with the world, I often think of a just and kind place. The irony of how seldom those two agree with one another is not washed over me. But I imagine it. And then, it occurs to me, if I can imagine a world like that, then surely, I must continue to be here; I must continue to walk towards it on my own path. Perhaps, the world I think of may still come to pass. I may still get to lend a hand in its creation.

I reckon it is a bit early to call the fate of everything; we have not seen all the cards yet. We have not seen how things unfold. It is too early, and we are the lucky ones. We get to change it, even by a smidge, even if a little. If a world that is kind exists, it must begin with us, and if a world that is just comes to pass, it must start with us, too, and they must come together—a chore even the greatest rulers have failed at carrying out, but we must try.

There is still some fight left in the world. It is too early to call it. There, look, hope has just gotten off the ground. It seems to me it won’t go down as easily. Not yet, not yet, not ever.

There is only one phrase that reverberates through the corners of coffee shops and bars: same old, same old. And I used to think this was a flaw, and perhaps, it still is: to not tell others how you are in earnest is the cause of all fights between lovers, all schisms between friends, and all feuds, in general. It used to baffle me because if I remembered someone to be out of sorts and met them a year later, they repeated the same beat. How does nothing happen in an entire year? It did not make any sense to me then. And now, it makes perfect sense. Now, there is so much new that I could keep writing about it for years. Only, there is just not anything to tell anyone about, for no matter how good or bad something is, telling someone makes it worse. The good wanes quickly when shared. The bad goes to worse in just about a quick moment or a quick, audacious question.

And from this point on, I understand all those who told me nothing had changed. If I were observant enough, I would know it, and if I could not, well, what is the use of giving me an opportunity to take it away? So, let us rejoice, talking about nothing in particular. This banality is our happiness. The coffee is coffee, always warm and necessary, and the weather is the weather, always changing, always glorious, always beautiful. We do not need to talk about anything if there is just so much to experience. Let us first go through life, and when we’re old and we’re tired, maybe just then, we will be able to talk about what we remember. And what of everything we forget? It shall forever belong to us. I do not want to tell anyone about anything anymore. I do not want to share who I am and what I am. There is little other people can do about anything. That is all they are good for: to run into on the street years after months and years have passed. Those who know what is new will know it already.

My days are my own, in my hands, safe and secure, and the trouble that keeps coming now and then, keeps leaving now and then, too. There really is no use in talking about it, so I add to the echo. “Same old,” I chuckle along, “same old.”

Halfway through September, I opened the curtains to find the hills covered with whipped cream clouds, and the day looked like a delectable snack waiting to be devoured. But as is with all snacks, a cup of coffee was due first. Once I spent a moment staring at the cobalt hills surrounded by the bluest sky, engulfed in clouds, I began the day. This was the first day that seemed a little normal since I had arrived back into my life. There is always a period of adjustment in all things. No matter how familiar something feels, you must fit yourself back into it. It made me think of how when you had come back and said Hello, I immediately jumped back from where you had left me.

Now that I know better, I should have taken some time. Like an old jacket you dust off as autumn comes into the picture, I should have worn your presence gradually. But you see, it rains here in September, and it carries over till October. It rains here till people are tired of the rain. And so there is rarely an opportunity to dust jackets off. Here, we do not get winter like it is handed to places where it snows, where you can see winter arriving slowly and setting where the glass meets the windowsill. We only get a brief respite from the rains, and then they begin again. As much as it was the better thing to do, even with all that I know now, I would have worn your love—or scraps thereof—quickly, desperately, with an inexplicable urgency. It always rains here, and sometimes, it gets too cold.

But then, when it rains, especially when you are safe and sound and warm, and it continues to rain through the night, the mornings are always spectacular. The mountains and the hills always find a new visage, despite never moving an inch, and waking up is always a joy. That is how my life has felt for the better part of the year. It is the morning after the rain, over and over again.

There is no other way I would want to live. There is no other way I would have wanted things to go. I believe, in the end, when all is said and done, and when enough time passes, even a closed door is a gift, even if it always rains in the city where nothing ever happens, even if we are drenched from time to time.

I come home and find myself standing in the middle of the room, thinking, my unbuttoned shirt still hanging over me. Of course, first, I lose myself in it all. It is only after I have been standing for, by my estimate, fifteen minutes that I find myself again. I would say this happens a lot, and some platitude about life and growing up may fit well here, but there is no use for it, so it would be wasting valuable words.

But there is something about growing up, about standing in a silent room, lost in all aspects of my thought and none of them at the same time, that takes me by surprise. If someone quizzed me about what I was thinking, I would not have an answer for them because, frankly, I don’t remember. I wonder how I got here and where did all the time go. There is an official letter I must reply to or at least address with an email. It has stayed on my desk for a while. I have sat on the desk repeatedly, day after day, but never gotten around to it, for it wasn’t urgent. The letter reminds me of how old I have gotten from what I remember as myself, where I started from, which, if you ask anyone much older than me, would be the equivalent of chump change in years.

Ask the old, and they have more years they have probably wasted than you have lived and considered crucial, even formative. Yet, it does not change anything; it does not stop me from standing by myself, thinking.

So, now, I am freed from my daze of whatever I was thinking about, which, if I were to do a loose inventory, would be whatever I don’t much talk about: a sliver of a memory from a long time ago, how I feel after living another day, of the little and big things that are happening, of the little and big things that have already happened, of life, in general, of other people, and perhaps, as always, of how little I can control. And now that I am freed of this without finding any conclusion and forgetting most of it, I must brew a cup of coffee.

This is, perhaps, the simplest way to tell what people think about when they are stopped by themselves in the middle of the room. This is, perhaps, how we get older: one solitary moment at a time.

Most people—perhaps, influenced by films or books—perceive life to be a single state of being. If something tragic is going on, it is only going to be that way, at all seconds of the day. A peculiar thing, which many fail to learn on time, is that a day is too broad, too large a chunk of time, regardless of how quickly it passes. All of it exists together; even the most stressful of days can use a joke or two, and no good memory exists in isolation—there is always some scuffle or trouble in all of them. All my days are chock full of emotions smouldered into one another to create a rather colourful alloy. And that is for the better because if life were really as it looks to be in films and books, it would be more tedious than we know it to be, and it is tedious enough already.

On days when I was listless and entirely out of my wits, I found joy in strangers and serendipity. And if there were no people around, even the sky does an excellent job lifting you up. And today was such a sky, in the middle of the month where nothing ever happens, over the city where nothing ever happens, the sky beamed and glowed with the brightest of blues, and now, it has turned pale again. But it was blue earlier, and what a blue it was! All of my days are brilliant in their own way, and all of them remind me of something tragic, and all of them are an amalgam of the two. And this is how life is, and this is how it always will be, as long as we don’t forget to laugh amidst tragedy and lament in happiness.

It is the simple irony of life: we are too small to understand the large things that happen to us. But we can, for all intents and purposes, keep an open mind.

If something is not urgent, if you can stop for coffee, then, by all means, do so. Life is too short, and things will always get a bit ruffled, but you must stop for coffee if they are not yet on fire. Slight tardiness is allowed when all we do is on time. It is even appreciated. You must learn to stop for coffee if things are not wholly on fire. This is the only way that you can find a pocket of peace. When I could not, for the life of me, find a day for myself, I learned to steal these little pockets of respite. I was often late to a meeting by a minute or five because I stopped for coffee. Often, you do not need it, but in the time it takes them to make it, and by the time you drink it, about ten minutes have passed. A cup of coffee is rarely about the coffee. This is the trick to taking an undisturbed moment.

There is a reason they call it making time. You can make it like you make coffee. You must only know the method and the ingredients, and like coffee, they, too, vary from person to person and from time to time. And so, experimentation is in order. Once you know, you know, and then you will not have it any other way. This is true for both making time and making coffee. I sat at the coffee shop for five minutes in the evening yesterday with nothing but a warm americano in my hands. It was the only moment I remember where I forgot what it was like to be a person. All people must have moments where they are nobody with no connections, with no strings stretching them in all directions. To be alive is to be a part of an intricate web. And yet, even the bug stuck in the spider’s traps stops its violent buzzing now and then. We must all stop buzzing now and then.

There is but a moment’s peace in it; sometimes, that is all we need. We must all stop for coffee or tea—the drink is never important. It is the stopping. The stopping is the most important thing of all.

If there is any want, any craving in me, it is to have an uneventful day, over and over. If there is anything the world is hell-bent on stealing from me, it is the opportunity to do so. And because of this, some part of me is furious at the world, and no matter what happens, it always will be. That is what it is to be a man, even today, yes, even today, as I sit and write these words. It is to be needed, and it is to be needed to grow up a little bit earlier.

I wish they had let us stay children for a little longer. All men I know could have used another year, and if that was too much, another month, and if that was too big an ask still, then a day. A day would have sufficed, too. And this is what all men ever want: a day without being needed or required to do things. And silently at that: there is little vocabulary for the troubles of a man, and if there were enough words, most would not know where to begin. But all men I know have grown up too quickly. I see this in the stories of my father. I watch this in my brother and my friends. I find this in the stranger at the bar at the airport who is from a world apart and tells me the same story I have heard over and over.

But we may not ask, we may not ask another question lest we be showered with opinion and so much more, yet not be granted what we silently beg for, never receive the thing we truly long for: a day without being needed, without being directed, a day without our marching orders, a day in the sun with no one calling out for us. To be a man is to nod in agreement at the world and say, “I will get it done.” Even today, yes, even today. To be a man is to look at your father getting old and, for all the talk all around you, know that you’re living the same life he had, only in a different flavour.

It is to lend a hand to it all, day by day, yet, be remembered for what you could not do. All boys I have ever known have grown up too quickly. Callouses on their hands and ache in every corner of their body, most men I know still ask, “how can I help you?”

When I woke up, I wanted to lie down on the lounger and read for a bit. It was a Saturday, and while I was not sick now, I was still awfully tired. In many ways, I am almost always awfully tired. It does not stop me from living my life. Some of us have exhaustion running through us like blood. We do not deem it a different state of being. I looked at the lounger, and it was flooded with clothes I was yet to move to the cupboard. They had been there for a few days now, and each day I had told myself I would do it the next day. Now, the day had come, and I could not read. With the sigh that accompanies all adults forced into doing a chore, one by one, I folded and kept all the clothes in the almirah, each in its proper place. And now, the lounger was clear, but my motivation to read had waned entirely, so I made some coffee and sat down to write instead.

When I had written a little, and I felt distracted, I got off the chair and stood on the balcony with the cup of coffee that never leaves my side. I looked at the tree in the building complex beside mine. I often look at it for no reason in particular. It was still completely green, and this disappointed me a little. It meant how autumn still had some time before it was fully here. It was time before we would start seeing it in the leaves on the ground in all flavours of green and brown, in pumpkin spice lattes and hot chocolates, in the evening breeze that never seizes, in the scarves and the jackets, and in things large and small. It was still a bit before autumn.

All life is waiting for things to happen, and when they arrive, waiting for other things. For a long time, I have waited for calm and peace, and now that I have some semblance of it, I now wait for the seasons to change. A person must wait for something. To wait for things, to do it patiently is the definition of living. I am alive because I am waiting for something to happen. I am alive as long as there is this wait. To be alive is to look forward to something.

I do not have anything else to say about grief except that there comes the point when it becomes a muted tone in the background. Like the September sky, it takes a dull blue hue and stays far away from the big picture but is also a part of it. The parts inadvertently broken and hastily put together still have cracks in them, but like how things that once irk you become invisible given enough time, the cracks have disappeared too. The ones which have not yet done so are covered in plants and leaves. Anything that breaks becomes a good home for a plant. That has to mean something. I may not be sure what that means, but it says something much bigger than me and my life.

But that is all I can say about grief. I do not see much of it; the little that is perennial is so invisible that I could not tell you which parts of me still hurt. Beyond that, all I see is life, sprouting in all corners of my being, all cracks I could not fill, and all days of future and past. At some point, talking about grief becomes like the sixth drink you have at a party; there is little reason for it, and you do not much need it, so you realise it is only going with the flow. Like all drinks, one must know how much grief one can handle. Like all booze shared with the right people, one may realise they can take more than they thought.

Now, I wait ardently for the year to end. There is, of course, no reason for this want. In many ways, I want this year to end only because I would not want to entertain the possibility of things going wrong. Even preservation can wish for the end of things. If I could, I would like to make camp and stay here forever.

But we must be careful when wishing for things; I am a realistic optimist. As quickly as things can get better, they can also get worse. I shall make a statement as bold as this once we tuck December away into an archive of things that have happened to us and, if life is willing, of how we happened to things.

That is all the more reason to relish in this calm joy of muted greens and subtle blues between summer and autumn. It may get worse; let us laugh now. We will not remember our worries, but the echoes of our joy will always pull us through.

I woke up feeling much better than I had in the evening before. A little ache in the body and temperature can do that to you. But even though I had woken up feeling better, I was still languid and slow. And so, I did not write until the day had gotten on already. It was afternoon. It began to rain. I was not expecting it. I was not expecting many things, yet here we are, and yet, this is my life. It is rare to get what you expect, but that does not make it better. In fact, I feel in most cases, it makes it worse. To get what you wanted—what a tragedy. Most life happens in the gap between the wants and what is received in the end. The trick, as there always is a trick with things like these, is to accept it kindly. If it rains on a September afternoon, you must smile at it; if you expect rain and it is sunny, you must do the same. We rarely get what we expect; most life is lived this way; it is the only way to live.

It is evening now, and this is a day like countless others, but that does not make it worse, as most would think. In fact, it only makes it perfect. To have the same day over and over again may be tedious for many, but it is a blessing. When nothing goes wrong, we must stop and acknowledge it.

The world is coloured in the sweet sepia of the sun setting behind the haze of the city, and here I sit with my coffee, working. What a life, I tell myself. I will remember this day, or at least gather a vague memory of it years from now. It will be when things get tumultuous and turbulent. Amidst all the chaos, I will find a moment to sit down as one usually does, and I will tell myself: what a day that was; nothing happened that day; it was a blessing in disguise.

It always is a blessing in disguise.

I remember being separated from the group on our hike at some point. It was a tiny moment, almost a split-second, where it was just me and the view in all its entirety. September, I thought to myself, how you always start so beautifully. The closer we get to the year’s end, the more reflective we tend to become. There seems to be a global agreement over this. As much as I’d like to argue that time and calendars are a human construct, even without them, even if we just saw the seasons flip to the next like a picture book, we’d still feel the same way. It is only that now, with all our language and vocabulary of time, we get to remark over how September begins like a tiny affair, like the first light from behind the clouds, like the steam from a kettle hissing and popping on a pleasant evening. It is only when we call it something that we can talk about it in earnest. And yet, even if we could not, we would still feel the same things.

But for now, I have the words. I have the words, and I can say to September: I’m glad to meet you again, old friend, and again, we shall sit and wait, for December is far away still. There is still time, and we can make the best of it. It is September. This is where we say, “oh wow, that was a glorious year, but there is a chill in the air now; let us take our jackets out; it may get colder.”

I can say this and so much more. What a luxury it is to have a word for almost everything: to be able to stand on the balcony wearing a jacket, staring at a hazy sky and watching it slowly adorn itself pink, and to mumble, “there is nothing more beautiful than the September sky getting ready for the night.” There is nothing more beautiful, of course, but language gets close. I can say whatever I want to say, as I want to say it.

There is an agreement that it is September, that we all feel the chill in the air. There is an agreement that we must handle our affairs, attenuate the loose ends, and wrap the threads still unrolling for December is near. But it has not arrived just yet. There is still time. There is still time.

It’s all ebb and flow—all of it: the way your heart beats, the way you love, the days you have, the coffee you make. It’s never the same, and it’s always getting better, or it’s getting worse, but it’s never the same. If you must keep anything in mind, it’s this; you must remember this. Scribble it on a piece of paper and lock it in a wooden box hidden deep in your heart: it is never the same. I will never feel the same way I am feeling about everything again. It will always be a smidge higher or a smidge lower, and that will be just about it. In statistics, we often say how a number alone is useless, that unless you can compare it with something, it is neither high nor low. It is how it is with your heart, too. Everything that you feel right now will either be higher or lower in comparison to something. All life is but a comparison to either what was before or what we can imagine, both of which are not absolutes, no matter how sure we are of them. The things that have happened before are not accurate yardsticks, and what you can imagine will always be finite to your lived experience. Life does not pay heed to your history, nor does it care for your powers of imagination. It unfolds as it wants, flows where it wants, and the only thing in your purview is to go with it.

It takes some of us twenty-five years to learn this; for some, it takes their lives, but you cannot compare it with each other. You learn it when you learn it; it’s never too early or too late. It’s never on time, either. It’s only there one day. Whatever you do with it is up to you, but it’s never too early or too late. That much is set in stone, and that much is all you need to go forth, and that is all I can say to you. That is all anyone can say to anyone. What they must do with it is up to them in the end. What we do with anything is up to us, but the trick is to keep doing something. It may ebb and flow, but you must scramble and do something. You must keep doing something. That’s how you stay afloat. When you stay afloat long enough, you’ll know it’s never the same, that it’s always getting better or it’s getting worse, but it’s always going; it’s always going.

I found a note scribbled from a few days ago. I believe this was written in a state of extreme inebriation, both from the contents and the glaring presence of errors in how I wrote it. It goes: I have reason to believe, at some point, my life becomes a drunken story told after a beer too many; this is not unfounded, and I do not mind this one bit.

Of course, this is a version of the note tidied up. I would not want to share the unkempt words, and even if I have no reason not to do that, I feel all notes are eventually turned into writing, so it is unfair to share them as they were written unless the original writer is dead and not present to write the words as they were thought to be.

I believe I wrote it at a barbecue party; I believe amidst the beers and the conversation, there was also a lot of dancing. We danced around a fire and jumped over it when things got crazier. At some point, everything becomes a haze, like the smoke from the fire that engulfed the edge of the hill we were on. And what of the drinking? While I don’t remember much, I remember it went on as it should have. Of course, we can all stop drinking and jumping around fires and having the grandest time in the world, but where is the fun in that and if there is, why have it when it’s the same either way? There is destruction in so many of us. It pays to let it out in bursts of impromptu dancing around fires, roasting food, and laughing like there’s no tomorrow, lest we set fire to our lives instead. I remember most of what I remember; the parts in between get hazy.

But I remember closing my eyes and taking in the moment around me. I remember imagining how it may look as a memory. I remember very clearly that I did this, that I tried to think of it like days long gone, that I was older, and that I had this story to tell everyone now. I pictured myself telling this with the nostalgia burning in my eyes, quite like the fire we danced around. I imagined it all, and now that I think of it, that was when I wrote it down:

I have reason to believe, at some point, my life becomes a drunken story told after a beer too many; this is not unfounded, and I do not mind this one bit.

Now that I have cleaned the house and calculated how much money I spilt on booze in the past week, I can sit down and write properly. Nothing much has changed in the apartment; the desk is the same, the grass is the same, and so are the hills. A mushroom decided to sprout in one of the pots, perhaps, to keep one of the plants company. Nothing much has changed besides that, except that even with every window and door sealed, there was dust on everything when I entered, but that is irrelevant and, if anything, expected. When untouched, almost all things gather dust, even memories. As I sit here and write these words, it occurs to me how there was so much of myself I had forgotten and so much that came to light when I found myself outside this apartment and this town. This trip halfway across the world has done nothing but dust these parts off. And now that they are out in the open, I shall try to make good use of them. In the Tatra mountains, I felt closer to home than ever before, and also in them did I find new perspective. With each step and each word shared, I now know how every part of me fits together better than ever before.

As much as I am against any sort of predestination in life, I believe you sometimes get the feeling. Sometimes, you hike across a mountain range and see a stranger walking towards you, who raises their hand and says cześć to you as you pass them by. And you start thinking about how every decision, large or small, made in your life led to that hello. Even if one little thing had gone differently, you might never have been on this trail, or even if you had, you would still not cross each other. It is baffling how we rarely stop to think about these things. And what if everything is chaotic? Then, we must pay even more attention. If it is about probabilities and permutations, then I am lucky to have experienced everything I have in this life. The odds of it happening were impeccably low, yet all of this has happened. All of it really happened.

The pull of a good day in a good life is incredible. This unshakeable feeling, this weird urge that you cannot shake off. The persistent itch you cannot scratch. You stand in a warm pool with nothing but peace about every corner of your existence, and then you continue to tell people: this feels like paradise, but I miss my days.

Over and over, you think about this, and when the thinking gets a bit too much, you say it out loud, only for someone else to nod in agreement. At that moment, you know there is another one like you, but it does not matter; you are still stuck in paradise. It does not matter how many of you there are; at some point, the urge to come back takes over, and nothing stands in front of it. What is this about home that pulls us back so ardently? Perhaps, it is how hard the feeling comes about.

Home feels so important simply because it exists. It takes a long time to come into this existence, and even with all that it cannot offer, it offers something incomparable. To have a home is to want to go back, into your days, into your life, at all times, from all places. To feel at home in your life is to want to live it consciously. I miss my days when I am not living them, and when I am in them, I am wholly engulfed without a moment to think. What else is there to want in life? I sit alone at the airport, stuck for another half a day, waiting to get home.

As the football game echoes in the bar and drops of frost trickle about my pint of beer, I ponder over how there is so much to see and want, how life has so much to offer. But perhaps, it is only worth going somewhere when you have somewhere to come back to. Perhaps, it is only worth having special days when you have the rut to compare them to, and even in it, we must take pride. It is far too challenging to build stability than people give each other credit for; it is perhaps the most difficult thing a person must do.

Over and over, you think about this, and when the thinking gets a bit too much, you say it out loud, only for someone else to nod in agreement. At that moment, you know there is another one like you, but it does not matter; you are still stuck in paradise. It does not matter how many of you there are; at some point, the urge to come back takes over, and nothing stands in front of it. What is this about home that pulls us back so ardently? Perhaps, it is how hard the feeling comes about.

Home feels so important simply because it exists. It takes a long time to come into this existence, and even with all that it cannot offer, it offers something incomparable. To have a home is to want to go back, into your days, into your life, at all times, from all places. To feel at home in your life is to want to live it consciously. I miss my days when I am not living them, and when I am in them, I am wholly engulfed without a moment to think. What else is there to want in life? I sit alone at the airport, stuck for another half a day, waiting to get home.

As the football game echoes in the bar and drops of frost trickle about my pint of beer, I ponder over how there is so much to see and want, how life has so much to offer. But perhaps, it is only worth going somewhere when you have somewhere to come back to. Perhaps, it is only worth having special days when you have the rut to compare them to, and even in it, we must take pride. It is far too challenging to build stability than people give each other credit for; it is perhaps the most difficult thing a person must do.

Maybe, anyone can be lost; but to have a home is to be found over and over again.

With the overview of the world in all senses of the word, I think of life, and only one word comes to mind: somehow. If someone asked me how I got here, to this pocket of peace, I would only shrug my shoulders and say, “somehow,” and that’s how it is on most days. Somehow, someway, we get wherever we get to, and no matter how much we plan for it or how little we anticipate them, things happen. This does not mean there is no control in our hands, and it would be outright wrong for me, especially me, to suggest such a notion. But perhaps, there is a beginning to it all. It all begins to change only when you seek to change.

The first step in this newfound happiness was the admitting. It was when I sat at a table in a bumbling cafe, surrounded by food and friends. It was then that I had, after trying all I could, admitted that I was miserable, that something had to change. All that was over a year ago. A year is a long time for things to change, and somehow, they do. But first, we must want them to change. Often, that is the hardest step. There is a sort of love between a man and his misery. There is camaraderie you have with demons you’ve had for as many years as you’ve had your friends. Some parts of you are lost when you begin walking towards happiness, too. But you must take it; you must take the step if you want things to change somehow.

Somehow—it’s a funny word because we spend our days thinking we know what we’re doing, and when we look back at the months and the years, and when someone asks you a step-by-step of how you did it, you cannot even begin to think how. You remember where you began, and from that point on, things start rolling into one another. And you barely have an answer for them, and then they look at you, baffled and confused, as if you don’t have a clue about what you’re doing. But you do. You know precisely what you were doing: walking away from yourself.

Sometimes, that is only how things begin to change. You start walking away from yourself, and somehow, you arrive wherever you do. That’s how it plays out, but what would I know? I don’t know much about how I got here. One day, I opened my eyes, and I was here, somehow.

I sit at the airport, waiting for something to happen. I wait here, wanting to get home. At a loss for words, I take another sip of the coffee. It occurs to me how airport coffee tastes the same no matter where you are flying from. It is always burnt, and while there is a certain quality to it, it is far too lost in the charred aftertaste. This is testament to the human spirit. We always manage to ruin things the same way. On a makeshift desk—my suitcase—and a terrible cup of coffee, I sit writing about yet another irrelevant musing, and something still tells me this is important. It may not be important to anyone else, but to me, this is all that matters in the end. This is it, I tell myself; this is my moment; this is my element. This suspension of life, between all this busyness, this is where we sit, pretending to be artists. No one is an artist until it’s a little too late. No one is an artist before their time. Until then, it’s all pretend.

Bad as it may be, the coffee has breathed new life into these hands of mine. It makes me think how even the worse things are, perhaps, not so bad in the end. All things find a way to do what they are supposed to do. We cannot know much about the world and how it works, but we can know this: it all makes sense at some point. If there is anything I can think of life, it’s how abundant, how beautifully abundant it has become, and how effortless! Often, it does not occur to us how miserable we are until someone touches the mosaic where it’s cracked. This does not mean the misery isn’t there; it only means it is hidden well enough under the colours. Until someone pushes into the crack and marks the beginning of a catastrophe. Over time, you learn how this, too, was a favour.

I think of last autumn as I sit at the cusp of another. It is a remarkable thing when the pages of life ruffle into something new. And I only think of how there is nothing but more, more, and more. It is going to be an incredible life. It has been an incredible life. There is little else to say. There is always little to say when you’re happy, but you must say something. You must always say something.

It is always what you don’t do that you regret or, at least, ruminate over. We remember a beautiful view, and we often think of how we should’ve gazed more, of how we should have looked closely at parts of the scenery we can’t much recall. It has been my realisation that when in doubt, it is best to say yes, regardless of how many How To… books in the bookstores tell me otherwise. It may be sound advice, but not all advice that seems sensible is good for you. If everyone in the world followed all sensible advice, they would not do half the things they managed to do. Most of what we do is a rebellion against what makes sense. Most life happens in the little window you overcome hesitation in. All good stories begin with: I know it makes little sense.

If someone had asked me in spring, even though it had blossomed bountifully, whether I would spend the beginning of autumn in another corner of the world, I would have said they were out of their mind. But then again, most life is about embracing the possibility of all things. Hiking over a trail with newfound friends who each have a unique way of looking at the world, for people seldom look at things in the same way, I thought over a lot of things, but most of all, I thought about the moment of inflexion. And the more I thought about it, as we crossed one picturesque landscape after another, the more I could see only one word: yes. It is in saying yes to most things that life blossoms like the spring I laughed away all those months ago. It is in saying yes that I am here. And wherever I go next, only my subtle agreement will take me there.

Things start to change the moment you entertain the possibility. The yes, the word itself comes much, much later. It is but a way to seal the deal; on most occasions, the decision is already made when you start pondering. That’s the trick to serendipity: you entertain all thoughts, and when something in you begs to say yes, you do it, regardless of how inane it sounds.

There is little that makes sense in this thing we call life, but if there’s anything that does, it’s that all good stories begin the same way.

The way we look at things dictates what things are; there is no one world; there are only ways to look at it. Something in me compels me to look at the commonalities of all things in the world. It is easier for me to stare at a bee buzzing around my drink and think of how that has something to say about how we are slaves to what we crave than it is for me to think of how a bee is a nuisance, and I must hush it away. It is how we are built that builds the world around us. I see common ground where there is none, similarity where there is nothing but difference. For better or worse, the world will forever look like this to me: a stream of intersections where everything affects everything. I often think about what came first: this disposition against difference or my relentless hope for all of us. I wonder which caused which, and like a classic chicken and egg problem, we shall not know until much, much later.

For now, I sit in a place, not unlike the one I come from; surely, the words are different, and from what I can gather, the bees prefer rum. Still, there is more around me that makes me feel like I have always been here, and if not, that I could be here and be the same person I am right now for as long as I stay the way I am. But I will change, and so will how I look at things. If there is something I have learned in this life that finds a way to surprise me when I least expect it, it is that it all begins with time. The times change, changing us in the process, and when we change, so does the world. People think it is the other way round, that the world changed them, but that is seldom the case. Even learning a new word makes it appear everywhere. Most things are behind invisible veils, hidden only by what we choose not to see. That does not mean they are not there; it only means we see less than we think we do.

And if we look closely, and if we look at the bigger picture, and if we somehow manage to do it together, we can often get a peek through the curtain. It is when we see how it’s all the same. But what do I know? I only see what I see. Someone else may see nothing but difference, and being as I am, I will find something in common with them, too.

There is a lot to say about life, but there is little to talk about when someone asks you how it’s going. If it’s going good, you don’t want to jinx it and say it out loud, and if it’s going bad, why talk about it after all? And then, there is a space between the two. There i s the quiet you can talk about, as ironic as it seems. There is a lot you can say about it. When someone asks you about life, you can tell them about lush green grass, you can talk about blue skies, and if life allows, you can talk about the hearty meal and the conversation before it, and if you’re not as drunk as people like me tend to get, you can talk about the conversation after it. But almost always, when someone asks you how you got here, you would not have an answer. Happiness has no route. But to arrive, you must continue walking. That’s the oldest trick in the book.

And of walking? It was past midnight, and the trams had stopped moving about Krakow—at least the trams that could have taken us home. So we wandered over the cobblestone streets under the rainy sky of August. Perhaps, there was hope for us yet. We decided to cut across the Rynek Glowny, but our hotel was still far away. Our mission was simple, if there ever was one, but I could not put it in words better than the ones my newfound friends had used: we only have to walk five to six blocks. Of course, that was not the case. But life is not about truth, as it appears; it is about hope. Hope is about walking five or six blocks and continuing to do that until you reach wherever you are trying to go. That is all it is about: walking five to six blocks until you’re surrounded by laughter and beer and people who are ready to teach you all about their language. I believe if there is any happiness, if there is any middle, it is in this: people you can drink with and when everyone’s drunk enough, they can probably teach you a few words.

Perhaps, it does not get any better than this, and if it does, I would not know it. I would not know it at all.