Once upon a time, before his mother gave birth to him and he drew his first breath, the fates decreed an ordinary boy would come into the world with a defective heart. A weakness so grave, he would spend his whole life trying to find healing or, at the very least, relief.
So, the boy was born and, in time, grew to realise that he was not like others around him. Whereas they could walk abroad, untouched by stories of wars and ruin, by savagery, injustice, and pain, he, on hearing such things, would feel as if someone had cut his heart to shreds.
Whenever he heard about abandoned, lonely, traumatised children, who wanted parents to love and nurture them, but found only the brutality of strangers - even when they were supposed to be familiar,
Whenever he read of families leaving behind everything they possessed because of bombs and fighting and indiscriminate aggression - the pots and pans and kitchenware, the loved and mended furniture and the small, well-tended garden with the prize lemon tree,
Whenever it came to him that greed and religious zeal had polluted and befouled natural places, maimed and swelled the ranks of lost young people, jailed and tortured protestors and ostracised, rejected and mistreated immigrants - or anyone who was 'different',
And most of all, when it occured to him that many around him felt nothing on knowing about any of these things,
He felt some cruel God had designed him for a lifetime of torment.
Particularly as his own life seemed so blessed and full of good things in comparison to those who stared at him from the photographs, their eyes full of the weary brokenness that comes of knowing they were utterly alone.
He wondered, sometimes, whether life was merely a dream he was trapped in - or that he did not have the wits or will to leave. He wondered whether those whose lives condemned and haunted him were truly just figments of his imagination.
He wondered, in other words, whether the problem lay with him.
Certainly, most were eager to convince him that it did. That he took things too personally. That that was just how the world was and always had been and always would be. That it wasn't normal to let every little thing affect him, to fill his rather defective heart - and soul, too, as it turned out - with that awful feeling of disbelief and nausea and grief. Beyond anything else, grief so deep, so profound, he felt he could plunge into it and never know its limits.
But by and by, he began to think that, perhaps, others' hearts might be defective, too. Unlike his own that felt too much, theirs seemed incapable of feeling at all. Somehow, theirs had been hardened - and their souls, too. They were not haunted by images of suffering. They were not bothered or moved by them. The best of them were content to live as honestly, as decently, as industriously as they could, and to pour efforts (and emotions) only into those areas in which they felt they could make a difference.
This seemed perfectly rational to him. But he could not square the reasoning with his heart's distress - even at those things - and there were many - that he could not change or ease or ameliorate or heal.
To his chagrin, his inability to reconcile his head and heart, to be content in channeling his outrage and empathy into something
useful and letting the rest be, began to make him angry with his seemingly stony-hearted co-inhabitants of Earth. Even those close to him, he felt betrayed by.
Why would noone mourn with him the state of the world, he wondered. How was it possible? How could he be so alone in his anguish? How? How?
HOW?
And then he realised that, the more he dwelt on the pain the world caused him, the more his own pain amplified the pain that was not his originally.
The more he raged inside against injustice, and the more anger filled his belly at the corruption and cruelty and cynicism, the more he added to it.
He, himself, was pouring salt on the wounds of a battered Earth, by his very act of identifying with its torment and letting it consume him.
The Earth did not need his anguish, She needed his commitment to work to heal it. She did not need him to judge others and the degree to which they felt as he did or not. She needed him to make peace with his own vulnerability and limitations and move beyond them.
Most of all, She needed him to be happy. And grateful. To step out gently and see, in wonder and humility, how magnificent the natural world was.
To acknowledge that, even in the midst of the darkest, bitterest, most nightmarish sorrow, the Earth was still there - and always would be. Still wise, still patiently waiting for Her children to pierce the fog of their own immaturity and rebellious adolescence, to stop hurting and killing and maiming themselves - and Her, even though She would always heal Herself, despite their staggering arrogance, greed and ignorance at how dependent on the natural bounty of their Mother they were.
He saw - and knew one day he would accept - that his heart needed only joy and a sense of trust to mend itself, to shield it from the seductive call of pain.
He was not being asked to ignore the many sorrows of humanity, nor the Earth's legitimate grievances, but he was being invited to turn them into something sacred. Inside him.
No longer to fuel what was basest and most negative within him, the hurt and pain he had always felt could be turned into grace. Into generosity and a willingness to help in small ways. Into taking chances to help in greater ways, putting aside his own self-doubt and fear and sloth.
A spiritual alchemy was his, if he only chose to honour it. A process as profound and yet as simple as taking delight in a child's laughter or the perfection of its repose.
