Бесплатный фрагмент - Parable of “White” Envy. Collection of prose

This book was first published in 2017.

All rights reserved. No part of the electronic version of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including posting on the Internet and in corporate networks, for private or public use without the written permission of the copyright owner.

Author’s note

Many people dream of finding the ‘philosopher’s stone,” with my own quest for it going through my creative work and take on entrepreneurship.

Our world is immeasurably complex and varied, yet there are certain patterns of human behavior. Love and hate, selflessness and envy, friendship and betrayal are but small grains of heritage that someone once spilt on the ground and forgot to pick up. Small they may be but how many mysteries and intricacies they create in our destinies…

Parable of’ White’ Envy

It is normal to be happy for your loved one or just an acquaintance, for your next door neighbor or someone everyone knows. It is normal, end of story. It is part of human nature.

Your parents were naturally happy for you when you started toddling earlier than others or began to recite poems better than your peers… Neighbors and nursery school teachers were happy, and, as time went on, so were your friends and schoolmates, colleagues and bosses. For many years you have tried to do everything better than others. You hated to be just like everybody else. You always wanted to win and be the first! It may have taken you years or soured relations with your friends at the nursery, school or university, but it has always been important to get the result you wanted. There was no time for looking back. No time to drop by for a game of cards or pool, no time to visit someone who had fallen ill, no time to have a drink or chat.

Then, some ten years later, once you completed your education and took your first career steps, you find yourself surrounded by people who admire your achievements. Not just happy for you but admiring you. Those who work with you, those with whom you were christened, went to school, or played outside. They are happy for you and envy you. Your accomplishments are making you bloat with joy! The time has come for people to envy you! It is the most splendid kind — ‘white’ envy! White as virgin snow. As fluffy as new snowflakes. The kind of snow we take a running dive into, hot and red from a sauna, squealing with delight like piggies! Phew! So much steam from the hot bodies streaming to the sky that one cannot see a thing around. Nothing but white snow with depressions made by naked young bodies.

“White’ envy.

You dreamed about it when you snatched the schoolbag from the girl you liked and pulled her pigtail quite painfully. Stupid girl, she did not realize that she would envy you with time! The teacher who gave you a bad mark will have a good cry, because he did not grant you, who were destined for Greatness, the opportunity to correct your mistake. Over these past ten years, how many of them have not ceded to you, have not understood you!? And now it feels great to realize that they are all envious of you! In a friendly, avuncular or, sometimes, even in a somewhat prole-ish manner. Simply, sincerely, openly. Life has become so pleasant and nice that it can turn one’s head. And forward, uphill again — building a career, seeking new achievements! Career, success, money, power — these are the mountain ranges upon the land of our life. These are the peaks that many attempt to climb. But few reach the summit.

You are anchored on a cliff wall without even looking down. Without looking at those who are being envious. And up you move again along the wall. Let them see how magnificent your ascent is, let them keep being envious. This envy is white and it can cause no harm. You cling on, drive the hook in, drop the cumbersome load, setting stones on those below without as much as looking down to check whether anyone has been hit. No time for that. And here is another rest stop after a long climb and plenty of hard work. So have passed the next ten years. Where are the bullying boys from the neighborhood? Where are your first crush and your first teacher? Where is the dean who would not admit you to your graduation exams? Only twenty years have passed… Yet, for some reason, they are no longer looking in your direction. Black has turned their envy, permeating the feelings of all those who just yesterday were happy for your first successes. The white snow is now smeared with thick black smoke and black smuts of the burnt and unread notebook pages soaked with tears and pleas of your friends, guys from the neighborhood or classmates, who also wanted to make a foray into climbing, but broke down or slipped. Slipped into hard drinking, or penury, or simply were down on their luck. How many of them have been left on the other end of the line, with their request facing nothing but the busy signal or your secretary’s dry tone…

In that case, those who have never come to ask for anything must then continue to be full of ‘white’ envy for you and proud to know you, must they not? But they are not. You look in the mirror, rub your cheeks and sink onto your sofa. Black envy is coming at you thick and fast. It has become tap water, air in the car tires. Envy is getting blacker, although one would have thought it is already as black as it gets. You start feeling increasingly ill at ease, to the point you wish you could escape into a different world. The world where you have no classmates, no former friends, no colleagues, no former neighbors or even acquaintances. No one. No one who would recognize you or know of your achievements. Because you have already become keenly aware that there is not just black envy overwhelming your life but hate standing at your threshold. And it is coming from those who used to be happy for and envious of you, who thought you were the best and followed you.

Suddenly this hate has come between you and them like an insurmountable wall. The space is now filled with thick black corrosive hate. And there is no remedy. Remedy for hate. You have been warned.

Yet you have ignored the warning, you have not looked back. Too bad for you…

Parable of Entrepreneur and Functionary

The Entrepreneur and the Functionary have been at loggerheads for many years: which of them was the first to come into the material world?

The Functionary claims that the first Entrepreneur would never have arrived if there had not been someone to write down the laws and to organize their proper enforcement. The first Functionary wrote these laws to define who could be an Entrepreneur and how he should live his life. That means that the first Functionary created the first Entrepreneur.

The Entrepreneur disagrees. What would the first Functionary have had to regulate and where would the money for it have come from if the first Entrepreneur had not started to get rich and make others rich too? And if he had not then decided to create a Functionary in an effort to start fair distribution of benefits between the stronger and the weaker? To this effect, the Functionary was enabled to make laws and set up various inspectorates and ministries. Thus, the first Entrepreneur created the first Functionary. And the first Entrepreneur assumed the maintenance of the first Functionary.

So goes the years-long argument between the Entrepreneur and the Functionary — not for the sake of historical justice but for the sake of domination over the other: who created whom?

They struggle to realize that the chicken laying eggs also hatched from an egg…

Parable of Boot-Blacker

He blacks the boots of The Master.

He is a quiet, diligent middle-aged boot-blacker, and He has always dreamed of blacking the boots of The Master.

She is the wife of the One who blacks the boots of The Master and she is very proud of it. She never fails to remind anyone she is speaking with that She is the wife of the One who blacks the boots of The Master.

The brother of the wife of the One who blacks the boots of The Master never misses an opportunity to tell everyone around him that he is the brother of the wife of the One who blacks the boots of The Master. That is why the brother of the wife of the One who blacks the boots of The Master will often avoid paying in restaurants for either himself or his friends, who never stop repeating that they are friends with the brother of the wife of the One who blacks the boots of The Master.

And so the brother of the wife of the One who blacks the boots of The Master opens a public reception office, charging the visitors for requests that can be delivered to The Master through the One who blacks his boots.

All of this would be wonderful if it were not for one ‘but’…

The One who blacks the boots of The Master has never approached Him with even a smallest of requests and this is why he keeps blacking the boots of the Master!

Parable of Creditor

Disturbed is the sleep of the One who is owed money.

He has not slept well since he was borrowed from. He could not but grant that loan. After all, everyone knew that the One who is now owed money had means.

Time has passed, but the One who is owed money is still restless: he was really loath to lend out, even though these were the people he knew well and they were borrowing from him but for a short while…

Now, the son of the One who is owed money has come to see the son of the One who owes money. They had never been friends or even wanted to know each other since the father of one of them became the other’s father’s debtor. But now the son of the One who is owed money is hard up. And now the son of the One to whom the debt is owed has come with a request. Not with a request for a loan, but with a request to get back what his father is owed…