Nobody owes the candle maker

Two people in Bahrain make candles at home and sell them online. The wax is much the same. The jars come from the same supplier. In a dark room you could not tell them apart.

The first talks mostly about what is missing. The feed has stopped showing her posts to her own followers. The big marketplaces bury small sellers. Shoppers expect free delivery on a single candle. Bigger accounts copy her colours. All of this is partly true, and she waits for someone to notice and put it right.

Nobody does. The feed is not listening, the marketplaces are not listening, and the shoppers have never heard of her. The complaint is accurate and it changes nothing, except that she grows a little more bitter each month and a little further from the people who might have bought.

The second asked a different question. Not what she was owed, but what she could give. She began writing a short note in every parcel about how long to burn a candle the first time so it does not tunnel. She posts the failed batches and explains what went wrong. She tells people where to send the empty jars. None of it was asked for, and none of it was hard.

Month by month, the small things gathered. A few buyers became regulars. The regulars sent their friends. A gift shop in Manama asked to stock her, not the other way round.

What I notice is how the two of them sound. The first sounds tired. The second sounds busy and, somehow, cheerful. Waiting for the market to treat you fairly is exhausting. Deciding what you can add to it, and getting on with that, turns out to be the lighter load.