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’. My own quest for it permeated 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, an acquaintance, 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 tried to do everything better than others. You hated to be just like everyone else. You always wanted to win and be first! It may have taken you years, even soured relations with your friends from kindergarten, 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, after completing your education and stepping onto the first rung of the career ladder, you find yourself surrounded by people who admire your achievements. Not just happy for you but admiring you. Those who work with you, and those with whom you were christened, went to school or played with. They are happy for you and also envy you. Your accomplishments fill you to bursting 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, hot and red from a sauna, we take a running dive into, squealing with delight like little piggies! Phew! So much steam from hot bodies streaming to the sky that you can’t see a thing around. Nothing but white snow with depressions made by naked young bodies.

‘White’ envy.

You dreamed about it when you snatched a schoolbag from a girl you liked and pulled her pigtail quite hard. Stupid girl, she didn’t realize that she would envy you in 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 did not cede you, did not understand 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 simple manner. Simply, sincerely, openly. Life has become so pleasant that it can turn your head. And forward, uphill again — building a career, seeking new achievements! Career, success, money, power — these are the mountain ranges upon the landscape of our lives. These are the peaks that many attempt to climb. But few reach the summit.

You are anchored on a cliff wall. You don’t even look down, or at those who are envious of you. And up you move again along the wall. Let them see how magnificent your ascent is, let them keep on being envious. This envy is ‘white’ and it causes no harm. You cling on, drive the piton in, drop the cumbersome load, sending stones down on those below without so 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. And so, ten years passed. Where are the bully boys from the neighborhood? Where is 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. Their envy has turned ‘black’, 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 burnt and unread notebook pages are soaked with the tears and pleas of your friends, people 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 had bad luck. How many of them were left on the other end of the line, with their request facing nothing but a 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, mustn’t they? But they are not. You look in the mirror, rub your cheeks and sink onto your sofa. Black envy is swirling in thick and fast. It has become the tap water, and the air in the car tires. Envy is getting blacker, although one would have thought it was already as black as it could get. You start feeling increasingly ill at ease, to the point you wish you could escape to a different world, one 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 also hate is standing at your door. 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 stands between you and them like an insurmountable wall. The space is now filled with thick, black corrosive hate. And there is no remedy for hate. You have been warned.

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

Parable of THE Entrepreneur and THE Functionary

The Entrepreneur and the Functionary have been at loggerheads for many years: which of them was the first to appear in 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 had he not then decided to create a Functionary in an effort to start fair distribution of benefits among the strong and the weak? To this effect, the Functionary was tasked to pass 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 interminable 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 THE 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, and who never stops repeating that he’s a friend of 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 office, charging 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 the smallest of requests and this is why he keeps blacking the boots of the Master!

Parable of THE 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 people he knew well and they borrowed from him only 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 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.

If you do not want your sons to make the rounds of your debtors, do not be the One who is owed money!