Calgary, December 2024
“You can’t buy happiness”, says the old wisdom, and it is true. Happiness can only be shared with someone who wants to be happy with you. Many people have discovered it, and I am one of them.
I am a pretty ordinary man. I was living, most of the time happily, with my wife Jane, and worked as a manager of the local branch of a big bank. Jane was a librarian. In the past, we considered having children, but we postponed it until it was too late. With time we settled into a steady, somewhat boring routine and I didn’t expect any changes. But then I met him. It happened one afternoon after work when I went for a beer at the nearby pub. I had a hard day and wanted to wind down before going home. I was sitting at the bar when a young man approached me and tried to be friendly.
“You look tired”, he said.
“Yes, I am. I had a hard day at work”.
“And what is your work, if I may ask?”
“I am a manager of the local bank”.
“Do you like your job?”
“It’s a job. Sometimes it is a bit boring, but it pays the bills. Why are you asking?”
“Because I might offer you a job which wouldn’t be boring”.
I looked at him. “If you mean drugs or something like that, forget it”.
“No, not at all. I don’t do anything illegal. Let me introduce myself. My name is Mark Smith, and I run a small company which does three-dimensional printing. Customers can send me photos of an object they want to make, and I will produce it for them. For example, if you give me photos of yourself, I can make a miniature statue of you. Or, a car manufacturer can send me a computer design of a new part, and I will produce it at a fraction of what it would cost if they did it themselves. The possibilities are almost limitless. I started the company as a hobby, but it became surprisingly successful. Now I have investors, and I need someone to manage the money. And, by the way, this isn’t just a chance meeting. I already know something about you”.
I didn’t know what to say. It was too sudden. “I don’t know, I must think about it”.
“Of course, think about it, talk to your wife and let me know”. Mark gave me his business card and left.
Before I could make any decision, I wanted to know more about Mark’s company. I found it on the Internet, read their website and asked Mark to show me his shop. It was impressive. Exotic machines covered the whole floor space, and two workers were busy operating them. “Now I have more orders than I can handle”, said Mark. “I will have to expand and hire more people. If you accept my offer, I will pay you the same as what you are getting in the bank plus the company’s shares. And they are doing very well.”
It was tempting. I am not an adventurous person, but accepting some risks might be good for me. It might be good for Jane too, to put some excitement to our life. But when I mentioned it to her, she didn’t share my enthusiasm.
“Why would you want to do that? We have a good life now”.
“It is true, but wouldn’t you want some change? Some excitement?”
“No. Most changes are changes for worse. You said yourself”.
It was true, I have said it many times. But I also knew that Mark wouldn’t wait forever for my answer, and I really wanted that job.
“Look Jane”, I started the discussion again the next evening. “Nothing would change in our life. We will still live here, you will still work in the library, and I will only go to a different office. Mark’s workshop is close by. And I might make lot more money than I am making now”.
Jane wasn’t convinced, but she didn’t want to argue. “I don’t like it, but it is your decision”, she said. I took it as “yes” and the next day I called Mark: “I will take your offer”.
As predicted, at the beginning nothing changed. Jane continued to work in the library, and I settled in my new office. But soon I realized that there was way more work than what I was doing in the bank. The nice nine-to five-routine disappeared and changed to eight-to-six, then eight-to-seven, and there were also frequent business trips to do presentations, promotions and meetings with customers and investors. Then, when I was finally home, I was so tired that Jane didn’t have much fun with me.
“You said nothing will change in our life, but it obviously did. And it is a change for worse”, she said one of those evenings I was home.
“But I make a lot of money”.
“I don’t care about money. We had enough when you worked at the bank. I want a husband I can live with, not the one I am waiting for night after night”.
Jane was right but I couldn’t do anything about it. The company was expanding, the orders were coming, and the work was piling up. “Maybe it will get better after the expansion is done”, I said but neither of us believed it. There was nothing I could do, and Jane was more and more unhappy. And then, one evening when I came home late again, Jane wasn’t there, and on the kitchen table there was a message:” I am tired of waiting for you. Tomorrow I will come for my things”.
This was probably the worst message I ever read in my life. I was standing in the kitchen, staring at it, with tears in my eyes. What now? Was this the end of our marriage? I didn’t know. I only realized that Jane was more important to me than all the riches in the world, and she left me. She even didn’t leave me the address where she moved. Now I was alone, and the only thing I had left was my work. Grim days followed, one after another, but as the days turned to weeks, I was slowly getting used to the loneliness. I thought maybe I should look for another woman, but I had neither time nor desire to do so. I wanted my Jane. But, as they say, the sun doesn’t shine for only one flower, and another flower appeared. It happened during one of the presentations I was doing for the potential customers. We were in a conference room at a hotel, and she was the only woman in the group. I don’t know how much she listened to me, but she was smiling, and I smiled back. There was an obvious attraction between us. From the list of customers, I knew that her name was Olivia, and she was the department head of a company supplying parts to a car manufacturer. After the presentation, when the other customers left, I invited her for a coffee which lasted till dinner. It was the first time since Jane left me when I enjoyed being with a woman. We had a few more dates and started to explore the possibilities of a deeper relationship. I didn’t lie to her and admitted being married but separated. “My wife left me”, I said.
“Why did she leave you?”
“Because I spent too much time at work and not enough time with her”.
“This is the curse for both of us. With me it is somewhat similar. I work hard and men don’t like a woman who takes her work too seriously. It hurts their ego”.
“It wouldn’t hurt my ego”.
“I guess not. You are doing OK”, she concluded.
It looked promising. I thought I could be happy with Olivia and invited her to spend a weekend with me. She accepted, we had dinner at my place, and I was hoping she would stay overnight, imagining waking up in the morning with a woman beside me. It was a marvellous dream. But dreams like that never go as planned. Just when we finished dinner there was a ring at the door and there was Jane. “Will you take me back?”
I didn’t say anything. It was just an instinct which made me take her in my arms and kiss her. I guess I still loved her. Then Olivia came to the door. Jane looked at her, looked at me, said: “I better leave”, and disappeared.
“Who was that?” asked Olivia.
“It was my wife”.
“You said she left you”.
“That is true. It was the first time I saw her since we separated”.
“What did she want?”
“She asked if I would take her back”.
“And will you?”
“I don’t know”.
A dark cloud came over Olivia’s face. “You must make up your mind. I would be happy to be your woman, but I will not share you with your wife”, and Olivia was ready to leave.
“Please stay”. I took her in my arms, almost crying. “If you leave now, you will make me as unhappy as Jane made me when she left”.
The cloud in Olivia’s face disappeared. We both relaxed, and my dream of finding a woman beside me in the morning had a chance of becoming reality.