I met him for coffee. A few days. That’s all.
He already knew my so-called nonsense. The rants. The ideas people roll their eyes at. Alex, leave me alone with your theories. I don’t believe a word you say.
And still he talked. Secrets. Advice on every small thing. How things were better with his wife — even though he’d known me for a handful of days.
I didn’t take the credit. I never do.
That’s the part people miss.
If you want something to change, you have to be the change. Not later. Not when the other person finally moves. You.
Most people wait. They wait for the spouse to take the first step. They wait for the world to become fair. They wait for tomorrow to feel safer than today. Then they call it fate when nothing moves.
He asked why I put myself in situations that don’t fit a man of my age and presence. I laugh with one person. I dance with another. I sit on the street with small children and play like a child. With some people I am serious. With others I make jokes that are no longer acceptable. With others I get angry. I dress and I behave according to the person in front of me.
Do you think this reality, this world, these rules don’t apply to you? As if tomorrow doesn’t count?
I told him the truth I live with: tomorrow doesn’t count. Today does. Now does.
If you want a change, you have to be the change. In this case, me. Accept it or not. Believe it or not. At some point you will do it too — maybe not the same way, a little at a time — because you will think: if Alex can do it and he doesn’t care what the world says, how it sees him, what it thinks of him, then so can I.
He got irritated.
That’s not your business. Not your problem. Not your obligation. Who do you think you are?
I am Alex. As a human being it is my duty to make the world a little better. To be part of the change.
You and your nonsense. Anyway, one day we’ll all die.
Yes. But not today.
And if you die today?
Yes. But not now.
And if you die now?
Then that’s what it is. No problem.
How can you say that? Don’t you care if you live?
I do. But in that situation I don’t have control. Not full control. Why stress myself over what I don’t hold? I choose to enjoy the moment as much as I can. Now. Not later. Not tomorrow. Not in twenty years. Now. Because now is all that counts.
You and your idiotic nonsense that doesn’t work and doesn’t make you better.
Here is the part he didn’t want to sit with.
From the first day, at that same kind of coffee, he told me they had a problem in bed, he and his wife. Both waiting for the other to take the first step. I explained how it stands. What he could do. He went home. Consciously or not, he put a little of it into practice. And it was one of the most beautiful nights in the last two years.
His words. Not mine.
Yes, but that wasn’t because of you. It was me and my wife. It just happened to go well.
Perfectly true. The work and the choice were his. Both of theirs. But before that, someone cleared the fog in front of him. Showed him the roads that were available. He chose. If that someone — me — had not cleared the fog, had not shown the possible paths, he would not have known what to choose, where to go. He would have kept walking blind.
Enough. You’ve fried my head with your nonsense. I have to go.
Pause.
Tomorrow, same time, coffee?
Of course.
That is the whole mechanism, without the pretty language.
You don’t win the conversation. You don’t need him to admit the source. He can call it luck. He can call it nonsense. He can laugh about “Alex and his rants” to other people. It still moved.
He listened. He applied, even at an unconscious level. It worked. It will keep working in him whether he accepts the origin or not. What I did with him, he will do later with someone else — a little, in his own way. That is how change actually travels. Not as a speech you sign. As a night that went differently. As a first step somebody finally took.
I gave him the credit every time. I claimed nothing, even when the map was mine. That is not humility for show. The choice has to stay his. If I start needing him to say you did this, I am no longer clearing fog. I am collecting him.
Over time a man like that may become a client. He may bring others. Or he may never pay for anything and still talk. The rants, the ideas, the irritation. People will hear. The ones who are looking for a change will know where to go. That is not the target. That is what happens when you live the thing instead of advertising it.
Life is beautiful if you choose it to be beautiful.
Same day. Same coffee. Same tired marriage. Same fear of looking ridiculous on the street. Same sentence: we all die anyway. You can use all of that as a reason to stay still. Or you can decide that this hour counts, that you don’t wait for the other to move first, that you will be the change you keep asking the world for.
My methods are not accepted by everyone. Some would call them dangerous. Subtle manipulation. Fair enough — the same gesture can be used for malicious things. You can clear fog so a man sees his wife again. You can clear fog to walk him where you want, without him noticing. The tool does not announce which road you took.
What comes after is what matters. Not who spoke first. What you do with what you saw. And whether you carry it with responsibility, because the responsibility, once you act, is entirely yours.
Nothing in life stays still. An opening belongs to whoever opened it, for a moment. After that it is yours. Only yours. The night. The laugh. The refusal. The next person you sit down with. Yours.
I don’t need him to believe me tomorrow. He already came back for coffee. That is enough. The rest is his life, in the only time any of us actually have.
Now.
