Page 270
Posted: Wed Feb 11, 2026 1:00 pm
Even if the whole world is wrong, even if there is no justice and all people
are bad, I still shouldn’t react so sharply. The problem is my reaction. I take
small conflicts and inflate them into massive ones for the sake of ‘justice.’
I’ve realized I was wrong. I met with you simply to test my own strength —
to see how long I can stay in a dialogue with you without it turning into a
conflict. I decided to see you just to tell you that I, too, was wrong in this
situation. Maybe that’s pleasant for you to hear. And so, I’m testing myself
to see how deeply I’ve understood this, and how soon we might start
clawing at each other again like cats.
And so we talk, my employee and I. We met late; by the time he reached me
by taxi, it must have been night. We talked for many hours. And the employee
himself tells me that during these two weeks — while he hasn’t been working
for me and we haven’t communicated — he hasn’t touched alcohol once,
hasn’t smoked a single cigarette, and has been keeping a journal every day.
He said he’s been re-evaluating his whole life, re-evaluating every situation
related to me and the work. He wrote a plan for the future, what he wants
to do, how he wants to change and work on himself; he made a list of all
his mistakes and shortcomings, and on top of that, he’s been meditating
and praying. This is what the employee is telling me. Now, in the past,
if I had heard something like that after all the bad things he had done to
me, I naturally would have said: “Prove it, show me, I don’t believe you.
Where’s your journal? You’re lying.” But, naturally, I didn’t react like
that. I believed it one hundred percent, naively, as if it were simply a fact
— like, “well, then that’s how it is.” I was surprised by such a statement,
of course. Then the employee tells me he’s already found some kind of
job. The only reason he could even come now was that he took time off
from this job to meet me. He doesn’t say what the job is, and naturally,
I want to ask, but I don’t. Because the aliens told me: no extra questions. It’s
so unusual how the dialogue is constructed; it’s never been my way. People
always speak so strangely — incorrectly, I mean — they leave things out,
say one thing but keep half of it in their head. The employee said he found
a job, but doesn’t say what, where, how long he’s been there, or what the
salary is. I want to know these things, but I restrain myself and ask nothing.
are bad, I still shouldn’t react so sharply. The problem is my reaction. I take
small conflicts and inflate them into massive ones for the sake of ‘justice.’
I’ve realized I was wrong. I met with you simply to test my own strength —
to see how long I can stay in a dialogue with you without it turning into a
conflict. I decided to see you just to tell you that I, too, was wrong in this
situation. Maybe that’s pleasant for you to hear. And so, I’m testing myself
to see how deeply I’ve understood this, and how soon we might start
clawing at each other again like cats.
And so we talk, my employee and I. We met late; by the time he reached me
by taxi, it must have been night. We talked for many hours. And the employee
himself tells me that during these two weeks — while he hasn’t been working
for me and we haven’t communicated — he hasn’t touched alcohol once,
hasn’t smoked a single cigarette, and has been keeping a journal every day.
He said he’s been re-evaluating his whole life, re-evaluating every situation
related to me and the work. He wrote a plan for the future, what he wants
to do, how he wants to change and work on himself; he made a list of all
his mistakes and shortcomings, and on top of that, he’s been meditating
and praying. This is what the employee is telling me. Now, in the past,
if I had heard something like that after all the bad things he had done to
me, I naturally would have said: “Prove it, show me, I don’t believe you.
Where’s your journal? You’re lying.” But, naturally, I didn’t react like
that. I believed it one hundred percent, naively, as if it were simply a fact
— like, “well, then that’s how it is.” I was surprised by such a statement,
of course. Then the employee tells me he’s already found some kind of
job. The only reason he could even come now was that he took time off
from this job to meet me. He doesn’t say what the job is, and naturally,
I want to ask, but I don’t. Because the aliens told me: no extra questions. It’s
so unusual how the dialogue is constructed; it’s never been my way. People
always speak so strangely — incorrectly, I mean — they leave things out,
say one thing but keep half of it in their head. The employee said he found
a job, but doesn’t say what, where, how long he’s been there, or what the
salary is. I want to know these things, but I restrain myself and ask nothing.