Sunday morning. You wake up early, it’s only 6:00 AM.

Such a delightfully odd hour to wake up, but the whispers of your mind are clear: sleep is done now, take a deep breath, accept the truth. After all those years seeking for a better sleep schedule and promising yourself to start doing it, you finally did it by accident.

The profound secret for a better sleep, you realised, is a sudden emptiness of your fridge on Saturday night, and you being too lazy to visit the grocery for more food. So you make do with a handful of mushrooms, some greens, and two eggs.

Too light a dinner it was. You decided to make it at least looked pretty. Your collective youtube cooking shows aesthetics will help.

Sleeves up, you swiftly threw a crushed clove of garlic into your sizzling hot pan, generously sprinkled salt and pepper down the smoke of caramelized mushroom, gently cracked two eggs into the mix. One broken. You mean, one scrambled one sunny side up, for diversity.

Everything onto plate, something missing? Colors. There is some brightly red chili and fresh green mini-arugula left. You remember placing them nice and neatly next to the others. All precious and adorable. A symphony, you thought, of flavor, textures, colors, and smell. So you put on some Nujabes for your ears to join the fun bunch as well.

And you sit down, feeling tinglingly happy.

**

What is this feeling?, you asked yourself. It is the kind of happiness that: An acquaintance has finally found you hiding in a tiny, lonely shelter, deep in the dark and cold forest, amidst the heavy snow, after years of searching. You invited the person in, who then light up the fireplace. You two sat down, smelling the good food, humming to the good beat, silently enjoying the light and heat radiated from the new fire.

This is it!, the kind of happiness that is effortless, ever-glowing, crackling like a small fire, but full of promises to stay around for good.

In total contrast are fleeting pleasures. You know too well the rushed release of hormones stimulated by necessary skills you have mastured since puberty. Also not anything like the taste of sugary food. Definitely not that time when you score better than your friends in class or in life. Not when Facebook people are sending you obligatory likes for that shiny new job, clothes, relationship, millionth picture carefully crafted artsy - or any other new token on the validation rat race.

You remember that the acquaintance, a firekeeper themselves, told you the wisest things in the whole wide world, all the while tapping feet to your soulful jazzy music as the youtube playlist rolls on. ♪ I have seen the sparrow get high, but he ain’t freer than you. Don’t let space and time confuse ya, don’t let names and forms abuse ya! ♫.

Before you know it, your feet were slowly tapping too. Your mind sprung back to reality where all become silent. Cold fuzzy carpet underneath. Darkness retreat to the corner of the room. Air is chilling. Sunday morning light slowly creeping through the aluminum shades, sitting shy on the windowsill. You hear your breath, clear, in and out, air pressure vibrates in accordance. You smell the delicious spice lingering from last night kitchenwork. There are probably birds tweeting somewhere. Water drops on the roof become miraculously melodic. The silhouette of your small plant pot seems to be singing something. You are attuned to every minute details of this beauty.

It has been a long time since you observe the world this untainted, with the absolute innocence of a child. You are euphoric, sipping and savouring every sweet moment down to the bottom of your soul. Going to work tomorrow will never be the same.

**

An instinctive question echoed: Who cares? - Nobody. You gladly noticed.

Nobody cares that you are having the time of your life. That this, and last night’s joyful reunion in the shelter are more real than anything they ever know about you. Pic or didnt hppn. You are to them, essentially, just another mediocre spark of life whose existence is shorter than one moment of their universe getting distracted.

The world is too crowded with such dim sparks. Everyone squeeze themselves in an allocated tiny little space, on that fast scrolling electronic newsfeed, screaming for attention by the catchiest visual cues. Algorithms jump to the help. Highlight that congrats, play the notification tune, red must be on blue, send out reminders that your friend happiest birthday is just one mechanical click away, join you to the sympathetic community of three or several shades colored avatars.

Algorithms know people are scared of reaching out, touching, making an effort to do conversations, smile, hug, sending letters. So they do it for them. Automated human interaction, why not? the thing is profitable. People signed a contract to lend out their presence to a giant number-crunching machine, whose by-product is lifeless signals dressed up as human interaction, manifested to the extent that actually makes some people feel important, loved, and not alone for a short moment feasting on it.

**

lol. Too dramatic and pessimistic. But connecting people is an overcooked mission now anyway, you added. You don’t care about the other people as much as they don’t care about you. Upon this realization, you leave your phone on the desk, black mirror faced down. Torn from your morning routine of Facebook, Quora, Twitter sessions on the toilet, you stood up next to the window, looked beyond the silent construction site.

There is a pretty sakura tree, blooming its violet little flowers, blending in and out to the early sky’s color. Whether it is screaming for attention or not, therefore, is totally up to the beholder.

People like you who are indifferent to trees closed the window shades and drifted their mind away, leaving the blossoms alone. But then there are always people who love Sakura, that gather around and admire. The tree keeps on sprouting nevertheless, because it’s spring, not because of the admirers.

You sit down, understand that it is time to walk out of the crowded, noisy and monotone forest, find a construction site, and plant your own sakura thingy.