Sometimes the stuff that you wish for in life, is
the stuff that scares you the most. So it was with Thing. It was his last day
at school, the last day of whatever this experience had been.
It had been difficult, not least for the fact that
his mother and father had both left and never returned. It had been difficult
because some people saw him as different and felt that Thing should suffer as a
consequence. What was it that people feared over difference? Thing still couldn’t
work that one out. But Thing had learned a lot, too. He had learned that no
matter how bad today is, tomorrow comes with a promise. He learned that just
because people looked kind, it didn’t mean that they were. Just like he learned
that the meanest looking people can be the kindest. He’d realised it was the
heart that mattered and not anything else.
His teacher had brought Thing to the front of the
class to present Thing with a medal for standing up to bullying and standing up
to bullies. Thing had found out that people weren’t born bullies – no, bullies
were made out of the fear of those who looked after them. Hearts were made to
bully, it wasn’t a natural state of life. As he had grown older and grown more
wise, Thing had walked the corridors of school looking after those whose lives
were made all the sadder by being picked upon. Thing helped them stand up for
themselves – because a moment of life spent in anger or sadness, is really a
moment wasted.
Thing found a couple of friends and lost a couple
of friends, but that wasn’t anything to do with Thing. It was life. You met
people for a time – some a long time, some short – and you might help that
soul, or just walk by their side, or perhaps learn from them through their
kindness or even their unkindness. Yet it seemed to Thing that those you met
were not their by accident. Perhaps he was over-thinking it all, but what he
believed worked for Thing and that was enough in itself. And in there was
another lesson, don’t pull apart another’s beliefs no matter how different they
are to you. It is what drives their soul and who was Thing to interfere with
that?
So thing took his medal and his book that he had received
for being the best at telling stories in class, and he walked away from school
and up the hill for the last time.
He sat at the mouth of his cave, where he had sat
for many summers and winters waiting on his mother and father to return. He
wondered what he’d do next.
It was then he realized that in the distance there
was a horizon and he had never seen over that horizon. So that is what he’d do,
he’d keep walking towards the horizon and see what happened. If Thing never
reached it, what would it matter? There would be adventures out there, there
would be people who had been to the horizon and were on their way back. There
would be other Things who had seen and done what he had. And somewhere out
there Thing might meet his mother and father.
So he packed a knapsack and put in it - his medal,
his book, and a cup his parents had given him. Everything he needed for a new
life.
Just in case his mother and father came back while
he was away, Thing left them a note:
Dear Mother and Father. Gone to see the world, I
won’t be gone forever. Wait on me, I’ll be back when I get to the horizon.
And as Thing slipped down the mountainside for the
last time, he whistled a little tune his parents had taught him. And although
he was walking on his own, he felt that somewhere, somehow, someone was
watching over him and he felt warm inside.
:-)
bobby stevenson 2014
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