Chapter: The Last Ride

Introducing the Book Remíza – The Bet on Life 

Chapter: The Last Ride

...And now I stood there as a man who had failed. A man who had betrayed everyone who loved him. My mother, my father, my sister, my family—everyone who had believed in me, who had given me their love, who had shared the most beautiful days of our lives with me—and I had betrayed them. I had let them down. Not because I had lost money. Not because I had fallen into debt. But because I had lost myself. Because I had allowed myself to become someone that the little boy who had once stood here with shining eyes would never have recognized.

My throat tightened. I could feel my eyes filling with tears, yet I couldn't let them fall.

What now? What am I supposed to do? Where do I even begin?

Before me stood my former life, full of hope and expectation. And I had no idea how to find my way back to it.

I stood there, unable to move, trapped between the past and the present, between memories that once brought warmth and a reality that cut like a knife.

My eyes fell on the old, battered boat.

I could see it as clearly as if it were happening right now—the little me, sitting at the front of the boat, gripping its sides with both hands, my eyes wide open, watching every movement of the water, every shadow beneath the surface.

And then I would shout:

"Watch out! Watch out! A rock!"

Every time a rock appeared in our path, I shouted it across the river. I warned everyone. I wanted to protect my family—everyone who was in that boat with me.

And they laughed.

They laughed because I did it every single time, with the same determination, the same enthusiasm, as though every tiny stone beneath the water was the greatest danger in the world.

We still remember it to this day.

We still laugh about it whenever we get together and someone mentions Tasov.

"Watch out! Watch out! A rock!" we say, laughing.

"Our little captain!" my aunt always adds with a smile.

And then...

Then it hit me like lightning.

What I would have given for someone to have shouted those very words at me before I caused all that damage.

If only someone had stopped me... shaken me... shouted, "Watch out! Watch out!" before I lost everything I had.

Before I destroyed the trust of the people who loved me.

Before I became someone that the little boy sitting at the front of that boat would never have recognized.

But no one shouted.

No one warned me.

And so now, years later, I stand here once again, in the place where I had once known pure joy, and later, the bitter brutality of reality. And I realize that perhaps none of this had to be just another man's downfall.

Perhaps these very words... these very sentences born from everything that happened... will become that warning voice for someone else.

Perhaps this is my own cry to the world.

My own attempt to stop someone else from going as far as I did.

Perhaps one day someone else will find themselves standing before their own rock...

...and these words will be the voice that calls out to them:

"Watch out! Watch out!"

Now, as I passed that turnoff once again, in a completely different chapter of my life, I realized that even though circumstances change, some places within us remain exactly the same.

They carry memories that never disappear. They simply sink deeper, waiting for the moment when something brings them back to the surface.

Lost in thoughts of Tasov, I crossed the Czech Republic much faster than I realized. It was as though the kilometers shortened on their own beneath the weight of memories that occupied my mind far more than the road itself.

And suddenly I found myself at the German border.

The landscape changed once again. The roads grew wider. The pace became faster.

Yet inside me, something entirely different slowed down.

Entering Germany had always stirred a strange feeling within me.

Perhaps it was simply because I associated this country with certain historical events. Perhaps it was nothing more than a random connection my mind had made.

But this time it was different.

This time, Germany became intertwined with my own past.

Extremism.

Today I can say that word with distance, but back then it was a much bigger part of my life than I was ever willing to admit.

As I drove along the German highways, memories began to surface—images, confrontations, shouting, conflicts... everything I had once considered normal, right, meaningful.

Today I could finally see that none of it had ever meant anything at all.

I found myself wondering how many people I had hurt.

Not only physically, but with my words. With my attitudes. With the ideas I spread, defended, and repeated without ever realizing how heavily they weighed on those who heard them.

How much hatred I had carried inside me.

And how easily I had passed it on to others, as though it were something that defined who I was.

Yet it had led nowhere.

Never.

Not a single argument.

Not a single fight.

Not a single conflict had ever created anything of real value.

Only more tension.

More anger.

More emptiness.

Long ago, I had made a promise to myself that I would never return to that life.

That I would never again allow myself to be provoked.

That I would never waste my strength reacting to things that simply weren't worth it.

Because the truth is surprisingly simple, even if most of us understand it far too late:

Unless it's about life—real life—my own or the life of someone I love, then it is not worth losing control of myself over it.

Everything else is nothing more than pointless conflict, taking far more from us than it could ever give.

And those conflicts had taken a great deal from me.

I felt it most deeply when I remembered my cousin from Krušovce.

A man I had always cared about.

Someone whose presence had always meant a great deal to me.

Someone who had been part of my childhood, my memories, moments filled with innocence and simplicity.

I still remember his smile.

The way he shook my hand whenever we met.

That quiet feeling of simply being happy in his company, without needing to solve anything or explain anything.

Then came the time when I began to change.

When I started saying things I believed were true, but which were, in reality, only reflections of something I didn't understand myself.

Meanwhile, he was living his own life.

He discovered who he truly was.

He found his own path...

...and moved to Australia.
 — JK —