Point 1 — Accept

October 18, 2024. Someone was gifted a notebook. This is the first story inside.

Story One: The Two Streets

There is a city in every country, and in every city there are two streets.

The first street is glass. The cars on it hum instead of roar. The windows of the buildings do not open, because the air inside is engineered and the air outside is not. A woman in a dark coat walks out of a lobby and into the back of a black car without looking up. She is not rude. She simply does not need to look up — the street has been arranged so that nothing will happen to her today that she did not already agree to.

The second street is five minutes away on foot. The same sky covers it. The same sun crosses it. But the pavement is cracked. A bus pulls in and empties a line of tired people onto it, and a child in a cheap jacket runs past them holding a bag of bread. A man sits outside a small shop with his hands on his knees and looks at nothing in particular. He is not waiting for anyone. He is just sitting, because his legs are tired and the bench is free.

A young person — let us say they are twenty-four, because the age does not matter — walks from the second street to the first, and back again, every day. It is a short walk. You could do it in twelve minutes if you hurried. They never hurry, because they have learned that the walk itself is the only time of the day that is theirs.

At first they thought the two streets were opposites. Rich and poor. Winners and losers. The ones who made it and the ones who did not. That is the story you are handed at birth in this country: there are two kinds of people, and if you work hard enough and smile correctly at the right rooms, you will cross from one side to the other and you will belong there.

But one day, walking from one to the other, they noticed something that broke the story.

They noticed that the woman in the dark coat, the one getting into the black car, was also moved by a current. She did not choose her morning any more than the man on the bench chose his. Her meetings were scheduled by people who were scheduled by other people. Her flights were booked by an assistant who was booked by an assistant. The apartment she lived in had been chosen because her peers also lived in that building, and the peers had chosen it because the building was listed in the magazines, and the magazines had listed it because the fund that owned the building had bought a page in the magazine.

No one was evil. No one was in charge. The current was simply running, and the current was money, and the money was moving through her the same way it was moving through the child with the bag of bread.

She was not the one spending.

She was the one being spent.