Last night after reading an interesting book I couldn’t fall asleep. I decided to go to the balcony and think with no distractions. It was 00:13 and I made myself a Dry Martini in a short glass with ice and no olives because I ate them all on Sunday. Before I sat on the metal chair I brought my favorite orange candle. Once I sat down I had an amazing view in front of me; a beautiful dark sky and tall green palm trees.

I started thinking about the different things that are happening in my life and for some reason I felt a bit overwhelmed, my soul was in a weird place, I don’t know how to explain it, how to elaborate it so you can get the picture. I felt sad and grateful at the same time. I don’t even know how that is even possible. The things that my mind was going through was crazy.

I was looking at the green tree in front of me and thought that I could have been a tree instead of a human being. I could have been an annoying mosquito or I could have been a cockroach. ‘Can you imagine a life as a tree Alex?’ I asked myself.

We always look for a better car, a better boyfriend/girlfriend, a better husband/wife, a better pen, a better country, a better latte, a better toilet paper and of course we believe that a better life is next door. When we are teenagers and live with our parents we dream about getting our own place and we say to ourselves that as soon as I am eighteen I will get my own place, I will go anywhere, even to a small apartment. We grow up and we get a small studio, and after couple of months that’s not enough anymore. Then we start wanting (not needing) a one-bedroom apartment, then we want two-bedroom apartment and even that is not enough then.

We start telling ourselves that our apartment is not good anymore and that one day we will get a big house so we can buy more things and have more space. When we buy the house we will have five parking spaces so we can park new cars that we will buy and not really use them. Of course we don’t admit to ourselves that this will not make us happy, we just say that it’s a ‘goal’ or a ‘dream’ we have that is not very important.

We always look for something better, something taller, something bigger, something that we don’t have. Last night I reminded myself that I have the most important thing, I have a life.  I have two legs, two hands and I’m healthy. Then I reminded myself how lucky I’am to have people in my life that love me and care for me.

As my short glass with Dry Martini was getting dry I remembered that having olives is just a nice thing to have. Having watched James Bond’s movies my brain was telling me that if you drink Dry Martini with olives it means that you are successful with the ladies, that you are a powerful and successful man. So many times we forget that we have a glass, we have ice, we have gin and vermouth, we have a metal table, we have a metal chair, we have a roof, we have sight to enjoy the magnificent blue sky and we have the sense to smell the tall palm tree. Yet we get disappointed that we don’t have one olive.