A coin spins midair—
Heads, you win nothing.
Tails, you lose everything.
The Man at the Window
He sat in the corner of a high-rise café, overlooking the city skyline. The kind of place where the espresso cost more than a meal and came served on a porcelain tray with a tiny spoon he never used. He barely touched his coffee.
Instead, he checked his phone. Again. Stock charts flickered, numbers moving too fast to grasp. He refreshed. He scrolled. He checked again.
The market was down. Not by much. Just enough to make his breath catch, just enough to remind him that what he had could slip through his fingers in an instant.
Outside, the city pulsed. People walked briskly through crosswalks, hurried into taxis, stood in line for things they could barely afford. He used to be one of them. He remembered the hunger, the way ambition had burned in his chest, the certainty that if he just worked hard enough, just made the right moves, he would be free.
Now he was here.
And yet—he did not feel free.
The Fear of the Fall
People think the rich are fearless. That money is an armor, a shield, an escape hatch from the anxieties of the world.
But the truth is this: The more you have, the more you have to lose.
- A man with nothing sleeps soundly. A man with everything lies awake, counting what might be taken from him.
- A gambler risks his last dollar without flinching, but a billionaire flinches at the sight of a red arrow on a screen.
- Poverty teaches desperation, but wealth teaches a different kind of hunger—the fear of slipping, of becoming what you once escaped.
The world doesn’t tell you that. It tells you to climb. To chase. To build and collect and protect.
But what happens when the weight of having is heavier than the weight of wanting?
Wabi-Sabi and the Fear of Loss
Wabi-sabi teaches that nothing is permanent—that the beauty of life comes not from hoarding, but from embracing the fleeting nature of things.
A cup will break.
A flower will wilt.
A fortune will rise and fall, like the tide.
And yet, this does not make them meaningless.
A cup is beautiful because it can break.
A flower is precious because it won’t last.
And wealth—true wealth—is not about what can be taken, but what can be let go.
Maybe the man at the window had forgotten that. Maybe he was still chasing freedom, not realizing it was already there, waiting in the space between breaths.
Lessons from a Man Who Had It All
- More is not always safer.
- What you fear losing controls you.
- True wealth is not in numbers, but in what numbers cannot touch.
- Happiness is not in the having, but in the knowing when to stop.
- Everything you own, one day, will belong to time.
The City, the Window, the Moment That Passed
He put his phone down.
The numbers still flickered, but he no longer checked. His coffee had gone cold. He took a sip anyway.
Outside, the city kept moving. People still walked. Cars still honked. The world did not care about his fear.
And, maybe, just for a moment—neither did he.
life 
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