Sam Bett

Why people don’t print money when they’re broke.

Just seeing you, though, I feel, I dunno, happamine.”

Nine winters ago—on the night of my twenty-fifth birthday, at a little after eleven, I decided to go out for a walk.

I’m not sure what gave me the idea, but as I sat there, watching yet another uneventful birthday coming to an end, I had the sudden desire to go out and walk around. Sure, it would probably have been nice to bring a cake home (my birthday is Christmas Eve, so the city was full of cakes), or have a conversation with somebody, but going for a walk was the only thing that came to mind that I could do on my own

Because at night, only half the world remains.”

It isn’t anything, but it’s so beautiful that I could cry.

Like, if you make plenty of money but don’t have any kids, you might get called successful. But unless you have kids, no one will ever call you a great woman. You know what I mean?

“It’s not like I want people to hate me. I’m just not about to go out of my way to make them like me, either. Being liked is wonderful and all, but that’s not what life is about, you know?”

I became unsure of how to leave the mirror, how to leave the me in the mirror behind.

“Even though all of our experience tells us that there’s no such thing as a book with zero mistakes, we still aim for that perfect book, don’t we? A perfect book with no errors at all. And maybe it’s a battle that we’re bound to lose before we even start, but it’s not like we have any other choice, right?”

Their so-called spirituality is completely self-serving, designed to make them happy, or make the people around them think they’ve found some kind of happiness. It’s this shallow belief in immediate profit. They go around talking about seeing something big. As if everything they feel, everything they’re thinking, is so big, bigger than all of us. That’s what they do. They act like they’re all big, ready to share their happiness with everyone, when the only happiness they care about is their own. Like, why can’t they just keep all that stuff to themselves and leave the rest of us alone?