Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way

Host: The street was quiet, its lamplight spilling across wet cobblestones like molten gold. The last bus had long passed. Rain had stopped an hour ago, leaving behind the scent of iron, earth, and change.

A half-broken neon sign buzzed over a small café, its glow trembling like a dying heartbeat. Inside, only two people remained.

Jack sat near the window, a cigarette between his fingers, his reflection fractured by the raindrops still clinging to the glass.

Jeeny sat opposite him, her hands curled around a cup of cold coffee, her eyes tracing the movement of the city beyond — a city both sleeping and awakening.

Host: The air between them held the weight of unspoken things — like the stillness before a storm that had already passed.

Jack: “You know what I hate about this world, Jeeny? It pretends to change, but it never really does. People talk about revolutions, reforms, awakenings — but underneath, it’s all the same old machinery. Same greed, same fear, same hunger for power.”

Jeeny: “That’s where you’re wrong, Jack. The machinery changes precisely because it doesn’t stop moving. Like Brecht said — ‘Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are.’ The system collapses under its own stubbornness. Always.”

Host: Jack exhaled smoke, the haze rising like a ghost above their table. His eyes, sharp and grey, reflected both defiance and fatigue.

Jack: “Nice poetry. But tell me — what’s actually changed? We’ve seen empires fall only to make way for new tyrants. Technology grows, but so does loneliness. You think a quote can save us from the cycle?”

Jeeny: “Not a quote. But the truth inside it can.”

Jack: (leans forward) “The truth?”

Jeeny: “Yes. That nothing stays still, Jack. Not power, not people, not even pain. The moment something reaches its extreme — it begins to decay. Every injustice eventually gives birth to its own opposition.”

Host: Her voice was soft, but steady — the way tides wear down stone.

Jack: “You sound like one of those idealists who believe history has a conscience. It doesn’t. It just forgets faster than we can learn.”

Jeeny: “Maybe. But even forgetting changes things. When we forget, we create room to remember differently. Look at the Berlin Wall — one night it stood, and the next, it was rubble. People thought that wall would last forever, just like they think their pain will.”

Jack: (smirks) “And yet, new walls went up — invisible ones, digital ones, economic ones. We just built them smarter this time.”

Jeeny: “But that’s still change, Jack — even if it’s tragic. Every evolution carries a shadow. Brecht wasn’t saying things will get better. He was saying they will move. And movement, even painful, is life.”

Host: The rain began again — faint, like the sigh of the sky remembering how to breathe.

Jack watched the drops trickle down the window, forming rivers that bent the light into strange, beautiful distortions.

Jack: “You know, I used to believe in change. Thought I could bend things my way. But after years in this city — watching promises rot — I realized: the only thing that changes is the price people are willing to pay.”

Jeeny: “That’s because you’ve been looking at the world like a ledger. Change isn’t a transaction, Jack. It’s a transformation. Sometimes slow, sometimes brutal — but never still.”

Host: Jeeny’s eyes gleamed under the flicker of the neon sign — alive with conviction. Jack’s jaw tightened, a faint tremor in his voice betraying something deeper than cynicism — fear.

Jack: “Transformation? Tell that to the miners who lost everything when the new energy companies came in. Tell it to the factory workers replaced by machines. You call that progress?”

Jeeny: “No. I call that imbalance. And imbalance always corrects itself. Just like Brecht wrote his plays to expose power, not to glorify it. He understood that systems collapse not when the strong fail, but when the oppressed realize their strength.”

Host: Her words hung heavy in the air, mingling with the low hum of the city outside — sirens, footsteps, the echo of something restless.

Jack: “You sound like you still have faith in people. I envy that.”

Jeeny: “It’s not faith. It’s evidence. Every time the world breaks, someone rebuilds it differently. Think of Rosa Parks refusing to move. Think of those students standing before tanks in Tiananmen Square. Things were the way they were — until someone made them not.”

Jack: (quietly) “And yet the tanks still rolled, Jeeny.”

Jeeny: “But the image survived. The image changed people. That’s what you never understand — change doesn’t always win, but it always whispers. It plants itself in the cracks until one day, the whole structure falls.”

Host: Jack leaned back, his chair creaking softly. The smoke from his cigarette curled upward like a serpent losing its will to strike.

Jack: “You make it sound poetic. But what if change only leads to repetition — like a record skipping on the same note?”

Jeeny: “Then maybe the beauty lies in the trying. In knowing the song keeps playing — even if we never hear its end.”

Host: The neon light sputtered, then steadied — casting their faces in alternating waves of blue and amber.

Jack: “You really think we can change just because we exist inside change?”

Jeeny: “We already do. You think the person sitting here right now is the same one who walked in an hour ago?”

Host: Jack looked down at his hands, the faint tremor gone, replaced by stillness. The world outside shimmered in puddles, its reflections fragmented — like truths seen through moving water.

Jack: “Maybe I don’t want things to change anymore. Maybe I just want them to make sense.”

Jeeny: “They never will. That’s the beauty of it. The moment things make sense, they stop growing. Brecht lived through wars and exile — he knew chaos was the soil of creation.”

Jack: (softly) “Chaos… creation… they sound like the same thing in your world.”

Jeeny: “Maybe they are. Maybe that’s the point — the fire that burns the old makes room for the new.”

Host: The wind picked up outside, pushing against the window like a restless spirit. A loose poster on the wall fluttered violently — an advertisement for some past election. “A New Dawn,” it read, faded and torn.

Jack: (half-smiling) “Guess the dawn’s running late.”

Jeeny: “No. It just never stops returning.”

Host: The words lingered — fragile, luminous. Jack stubbed out his cigarette, his fingers brushing the ash away like dust from a forgotten past.

Jeeny leaned forward, her voice softer now, her eyes almost tender.

Jeeny: “You see, Jack, everything moves — even the things that claim they never will. Power shifts, hearts heal, cities rebuild, and time — it keeps sculpting us, whether we fight it or not.”

Jack: “And if I don’t want to be sculpted?”

Jeeny: “Then you’ll still change. You’ll just break instead of bend.”

Host: The neon sign finally went dark, its light replaced by the pale silver of the approaching dawn.

Jack stood, pulling on his coat, his reflection now fading into the window’s glass.

Jack: “Maybe you’re right, Jeeny. Maybe everything moves. But I think the hardest part is realizing we do, too.”

Jeeny: “That’s not the hardest part. The hardest part is letting go of who we were to make room for who we’re becoming.”

Host: Outside, the first light broke through the clouds, cutting the darkness into pieces. The city stirred — cars starting, voices returning, life unfolding.

Jack looked at Jeeny one last time — the faintest smile crossing his lips, the kind that comes not from joy, but from recognition.

Jack: “So… because things are the way they are—”

Jeeny: “—things will not stay the way they are.”

Host: They shared a silence then — not empty, but full, like the pause between waves before the tide turns.

And as the sun rose over the sleeping city, its light washed over their faces, erasing the night’s doubt, illuminating what Brecht knew all along:

That the world never stands still — it only waits for those brave enough to notice it’s already changing.