Galery

1

Vladimir Lyubenov

There is a very interesting type of people, the most unpleasant one, namely people who are able to prove their existence to themselves and to others just by producing sounds and odours and by detecting and reporting bad news and facts. The first sub-type is harmless – you just have to go away from them and they cease to exist. However, getting rid of the second type is more difficult as its representatives frantically need to inform others about the unpleasant things that they have learnt or "proven". So, they speak loudly, they strive to be shown "on TV", write for newspapers or publish books. Those people tell young children that they were adopted and that their mother and father are not their mother and father. The soul of these people rejoices when they can announce someone else’s death.
There was a world-renowned literary critic who had dedicated his life to prove that Shakespeare, though brilliant, was homosexual, and that Lorca died from syphilis instead of from a bullet in a battle. Recently, a little man has confidently defended the thesis that the Mona Lisa is not actually smiling and her look is peculiar since her teeth were smashed because of beating and the strange expression of her face is actually a gap-toothed pathology.
Each of us knows at least one such person, even if we are not aware of it. Try to remember who first told you that Santa Claus (the intermediate generations know him as Jack Frost) does not exist. Neither his bag with gifts nor Snow-white. You hardly thought of this yourself. Someone told you it. Moreover, this person is pleased. This person is convinced that he or she is right and that this is "fair".
And the next thing is even worse, namely that, at one point, someone told you that God does not exist, whatever you had imagined in relation to God. Of course, this "someone" believes in God, this person has his or her own very practical faith, just in case, if He still exists.
So, we have come to the worst thing, namely that children have started growing up (and are still growing up too... ) who have never been told that there is a Santa Claus and that God exists. Perhaps there is only Jack Frost, but for a short while.
However, the people who tell children that there is no Santa Claus and God always fail to tell them one additional fact. It is very simple and states that when you do not believe in something, it really ceases to exist, but onlyh for you! If you think your family buy your gifts, this is true, for you. If you think that after your death there is only nothingness, this is true, for you personally.
You can count the most on what you believe in!
However, you have to pay for allowing yourself not to believe. Even if you know that they lied. Even if you believe again that at least Jack Frost exists.
Actually, the payment for you is to be sure that he came but did not leave a gift for you, thus allowing you to buy it yourself...
Then you have to pay the price of deciding to believe in something called God again. However, unlike the general procedure relating to Jack Frost, in this case everyone pays in a different way, in the way in which he or she believed.

 * This text was first published 24 years ago. We have reprinted it, with the personal permission of the author who was in the past a guest of GRReporter because it is still topical.