I'm forty-two, keeping watch over a street in the old city. For three years, I've watched people weather life's ups and downs.
There are no triumphant comebacks or earth-shattering legends, just ordinary people ground down by life.
A breakfast shop that had been open for six years has gone cold. A worker laid off after eight years on the job now delivers takeout. A single mother holds her feverish child, afraid to ask for time off. An old man who has run a shoe-repair stall for seventeen years refuses to pack up even in the rain. A shop owner who lost all their savings turns around and takes a job in a clothing factory.
Bent under rent, mortgages, tuition, and medical bills, knocked off balance by the winds of the times, and worn down until their spirits are nearly gone, they still never truly give up.
I don't try to tug at your heartstrings, complain, or offer feel-good platitudes. I simply record, exactly as I saw them, the silence, perseverance, heartache, and kindness.
I write about the dignity ordinary people refuse to lose in hardship, the faint light they refuse to let go out in despair, and how, even after seeing life's roughness, coldness, and unfairness for what they are, they still eat their meals and keep on living.
This isn't a story. These are the days our generation has truly lived.
Even after seeing the whole truth about life, I still love it. Not because life is kind, but because I refuse to give up.
