Happiness Bashny.Net

Mikhailov Vitaly

d. Krasnoarmeysk, Donetsk region

This thought has been haunting me lately. I don't know where it came from? But recently, she's just stalking me. So now, returning home from work, right in the middle of the road, she suddenly pierced me with some incredible force that even had to slow down and turn to the side of the road. I put my head on the steering wheel, then massaged my whiskey. I could use a cup of coffee right now. I turned the key in the ignition lock and the car moved smoothly. Without driving five hundred meters, he stopped in front of a small roadside cafe with the symbolic name “Happiness”.

It was the thought of happiness that haunted me. After ordering a very strong coffee, I thought about it. Am I happy? What's the point of happiness? Sooner or later, everyone thinks about it. And I guess I'm no exception. After taking a sip of a fragrant throat-burning drink, I put the cup on the table. The coffee was great. Am I so happy? If so, why do I think about it? If not, then all of this is worth investigating. So what is happiness? Everyone has their own answer to this question.

All right, let's go in order. There's three dozen years behind me. Is it too much or too little to answer your question? Definitely difficult to answer, but still some intermediate results can be summed up. What do I have? I have a family, children, a job (though not prestigious, but enough bread and butter, sometimes even with black caviar). The wife is pretty, works, the children learn (not that well, but not bad). The apartment is (recently paid off the loan). There is a car, not a super-duper, but still a foreign car. There is also a small country house with a garden. God didn't hurt friends either. All my friends and family, thank God, are still alive. So everything turns out to be happy?

- Do you want more coffee? the waitress interrupted my thoughts.

- Yes, if I may. Your coffee is very good. Now I'm going to look at you more often.

- Always happy, she smiled.

So happy? I went back to my thoughts. If that's happiness, then yes. What if it's not?

- Your coffee, the waitress put a tiny cup on the table.

"Svetlana" - I read her name on the badge.

- Tell me, Svetlana, are you happy?

- Of course, she smiled again. - I'm still young. Your whole life lies ahead.

- Yeah, what a stupid question. Everyone is happy when they're young. Then can I ask you another question?

- Please.

- Who invented the name of your cafe?

- I got it. Isn't it original? We wanted to call it unusual. So I suggested to the owner. And he agreed. As you pass by, you will involuntarily think about the meaning of this word. Don't you think?

- I do. I really do. Thanks.

I started thinking again. Is it worth digging into yourself if you are happy? Usually happy people don’t even think about it. They're happy. And suddenly I realized what was bothering me all this time. Why did this, not letting go, thought appear?

- More coffee?

I shook my head as I pulled out the bill.

- I'll get the change.

- Don't worry. Thanks again for the coffee.

Looking at the name of the cafe again, I turned the car in the opposite direction.

- There's got to be a turn here somewhere. Where is he?

Surrounded by trees and thick bush, this turn is not immediately noticeable. There used to be a small arch at the entrance and a sign with the name of the village. I stopped. I think it's here? This is where the arch stood. Now a couple of broken bricks remained of it and a sign with the name of the village lay nearby. I turned it over and read it, "Nothing." The paint on the sign faded from time to time. I took a back road.

Once a prosperous village, drowning in greenery, I was met with complete desolation. On the site of the former farm, only the foundation, overgrown with weed, remained. Half-empty houses looked like orphans, like children abandoned by their parents. And some depressing silence.

There's the downtown. In the place where the beautiful club was, a terrible sight appeared before me. A half-collapsed building with no windows or doors. How do people live here? Now from the club - turn left and at the end of the street. The closer I got to the outskirts, the more my heart beat. At last I saw this house, or rather what was left of it. I stopped the car near a miraculously survivor, a wicket. There was no doubt that the house was abandoned. I couldn't open the gate like I tried. It's firmly grounded. On the other side of the house there was no fence, and I entered through the weeded garden, into the courtyard. Two small houses stood against each other. In the so-called summer kitchen, the empty eye sockets of the windows resembled the empty eyes of a long-dead person. In the house, on the other hand, broken steles of windows in droplets of recent rain resembled a man’s eyes full of tears.

I went inside a house that once had a living room and two bedrooms. Now there were only bare walls, rubbish and broken bricks. Through the half-collapsed roof, the evening sky was visible, on which the first stars appeared. I looked at it all and could not imagine that people once lived here. The entrance to one of the bedrooms was completely littered with a collapsed wall, the living room floor was covered with broken bricks and crumbling plaster.

Suddenly in the corner I noticed the velvet corner of the box. When I saw the bricks, I saw an old album. After flipping through it, I found a miraculously survived photograph, yellow as an autumn leaf. She was wearing a young girl and a young man. As a young man, I recognized my young self.

Having carefully taken the photo, he left the house and headed for the summer kitchen. This kitchen was so small that I wondered how it was possible to have several people in it before. It was crowded. In the middle was a broken Russian stove. Suddenly I knew I would give everything I had to go back a few years. At a time when I was really happy. For real. This miraculously or specially forgotten photograph seemed to be waiting for me to find it. Either she was accidentally forgotten, which is unlikely, or on purpose, knowing that I would ever come back here. At that time, I looked at the world with very different eyes. All my thoughts and actions were sincere. But since our last meeting, God knows how much time has passed.

I looked at the yellowed photo again. Where is this sweet girl I loved so much? What about her? Why did we break up so ridiculously? Maybe because we realize that having happiness sometimes we don’t realize it’s happiness. That there it is, and that we continue our illusory search for ghostly happiness.