The Stone Soup, or the Point of Everything
An old acquaintance says we ought to listen. Learn why they hate. Try not to convert. Does it help? If I know I am right and they know they are right and if everybody is right and if we understand why they hate but if my words don’t reach far enough if my words don’t mean enough are not strong enough if their words only tell me I do not belong if I do not conform- what good does listening do?
Someone I really like says both sides- there should be both sides of the views. No more fake news or biased views, see it all for yourself. But people believe what they want to believe. They believe whatever gives them a reason for being. And what they don’t believe are lies.
Listen? No filter? I have seen that. Twitter trends. Hashtags. I have fought the good fight and exhausted myself. You never change anyone by reason or truth. No one’s ever changed you. I grew because I learned. I learned when I tried to answer questions. But even I have my fixed truths. Questions that cannot be asked. All I’ve ever wanted is to live my life in peace. All I’ve ever wanted is for the world to not burn while I live. All I’ve wanted is to believe in the peace. A good world. A kind world. And I know it comes with its shadow, I know we all remember the long nights in the caves while the wolves howled, the scream of the blood in the chase. We need to feel the night in our bones. Sports and adventure and the rhythm of the dance, the exploding heart as it revels in the madness of a wild, wild dream- isn’t all that enough?
I am not really angry. I thought history was something you read in the books. I imagined being brave, fighting enemies, winning battles. Now that the lines of past and present are blurring, now that we are history, you learn real battles are fought not on the front but inside the home, and you’re not sure you want to be history anymore. Give us today our daily bread and forgetfulness and the complacence of simpler times. I am not angry. I am in despair. I despair because how do you win a battle inside minds? How do you stop the world from imploding? And if you can’t heal, why even are you here, in this time? What am I doing? What should I do? And how? Is anyone listening?
We are all lost in the cosmos. We all want to be the centre of it, but it’s too vast, and our magic circles wear out. So we just lie to ourselves and shout at others. There has to be a better way than that, but what? We can’t keep slaying our dragons only for them to rise again. But how do we take our dragons home and love them?
I remember being a young sports fan- my head so filled with my team it had no space for anything else. I was nothing. I was no one. But my team winning made me everything. Then I found a book and a world. And I went inside that world and dreamt my own world and then from a tightly packed hope I was suddenly unrolling in a whole multiverse of possibilities.
That was a tangent. Good thing I am not writing a paper.
Billions of stars and you take one, midling sized. Corner of an average galaxy. One planet hanging like a pinprick in infinity. One life. Yours. A miracle. And like the wodwo in the forest you ask what you are and where you belong otherwise what sense does it make? I will punch a hole in the sky and see my bones crumble and bleed if that helps to create a pattern I can teach myself to read.
When you love a book for the first time you read it again and again and again till you wear it out and finally decide to search for new books. And if you can find nothing else you stop reading your old, worn out tattered book and turn it into your blood-soaked alter. The blood is from when you banged your head against the wall of space to keep the sky out. But you can hide behind your team to prove your own greatness and you will still be nothing and no one till you find your questions. So find your world. Find a multitude of new worlds. Afterwards you will still be nothing but at least you will know it and sometimes it will feel like hell and sometimes you will find a song and on most days all you will want is for the world to not burn while you live.
There are other things you will think of. Such as every kid should have books that speak of faraway worlds filled with strangers speaking strange languages that sound just like them. Teach them to colour and build and plant and write, but most importantly, teach them to think. How? Now when the air’s thick with the burnt out voices? Now when they’ve banned all the questions? And maybe someone else will think that too. Maybe if you dream hard and long enough you will be heard. Aren’t we all stardust floating in a nebula of preceding essence?
You will think of music that is not your type but sends your heart racing anyway, even if you don’t know what it is saying. You will think of circles and chains and the need to matter somehow because hate is exhausting and there is so much joy and beauty in the world.
There are stories that bring people together. Somebody made up some imaginary people and then a whole lot of different people in a whole lot of different places had their hearts broken because an imaginary person who was nothing and everything like them had their heart broken. These are the stories that teach you to hug the sky, feel the void fall through your heart and find your way back to the beginning and end. Isn’t that an amazing thought?
When I was younger one of my favourite stories was ‘The Stone Soup’. It was an amazing tale about this traveler on a cold night who managed to find food and warmth and friendship with nothing in his pocket but a piece of lucky stone. Someday I will learn to make my own. As Clara Oswald would say- the stone soup is not in the soup, it’s in the recipe.
Hello, I am me. I want to know why I am here. I am looking for my words.
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