Tag: Humanity

Peeling the Layers

On a cold Christmas eve in 1914, somewhere in Europe

Photo by David Ballew on Unsplash

My friends. My brothers.

The mightier the adversity, the faster the peel, and it looks as though the layers are indeed peeling off, one after the other, and fast.

Assertiveness, confidence, politeness, civility. Gone.
Kindness, humor, sympathy. Gone too.
Carelessness, compromission, cowardice, greed. Yup, we’re past them now.
All protection pads in a way, all expendables. All eventually peeling off.

Sadness, anger, rage. Wrath.

And then you reach the Blade. Naked. Sharp. Ready and willing to cut through anything and anyone standing in its way.

The Blade is the main driver, behind all others. It is the firewall of survival, inscribed in your deepest self since the dawn of time, and ultimately defining what you are, a mortal in conflict with mortality.

In our dire situation, it may seem to you that the Blade is the only master worth obeying. That bowing to it is not even a yes or no alternative, but a where and when one. That giving in to the Blade is redundant. It already has you. It already owns you. That it is just a question of peeling enough layers. A matter of pressure and time. And time is nearly up now.

Dear friends. Dear brothers in arms. It is getting dark and cold and I have little time left. I will cut to the chase before it is too late.

I pray that whatever the Blade is screaming to your ear right now, you can still hear a whisper of reason, you know, the one trying to tell you that it does not have to be this way.

Listen. It is carried by the wind across the no man’ land. Christmas Carols in Deutsch. And a distant voice calling for a truce. A Christmas Truce.

“Good evening Englishman, a merry Christmas, you no shoot, we no shoot”

And so it went on this Christmas eve in 1914, somewhere in the trenches on the Western Front amidst one of the deadliest conflicts, a moment of peace and fraternity against all odds, which went down in history as the Christmas Truce, thanks to a few men who turned a deaf ear to the calling of the Blade and chose a different path.

Let the board sound

Rabih

The Shiny Guy

And a ray of contagious light, travelling the universe

Photo by Josh Boot on Unsplash

So, there was this guy. He was shining. A ray of bright light. All who bumped into him were touched by his light and for a while, became alight themselves, and this light was contagious.

When his time came and he left for a better place, they uncovered a diary he seemed to have been keeping. Not really a diary, more like bits and pieces of inner thoughts intertwined with some lament.

It turned out the guy had no light inside whatsoever. He had been walking in darkness the whole time. A deep well of despair and loneliness, a constant yet unfruitful search for an ever-elusive ray of sunshine. His writings left no doubt about it.

So where did the light come from? 

It came from every wrong turn he took because those who knew better never gave him the right advise.

It came from every piece of bread he would be denied when starving at the side of the road.

It came from every border he could not cross, every job he could not get, every opportunity he would lose because of who he was and where he came from.

It came from every failure, every broken dream, every sleepless night, it came from the indifference he had faced when most in need of human warmth.

You see, this guy was carrying the curse that others, more worthy of it, did not wish to carry. He was burdened with crying all the tears they would not cry anymore. 

A burden chosen with care, a curse embraced with full prior knowledge, for he had already been there before, took the wrong turn, cried the bitter tear, begged for a piece of bread, a job, an opportunity. He had been left outside in the cold when others were boarding first class. 

Broken dreams had been daily bread for as long as he could remember, and from the rumbles of his dreams and the ashes covering his days and nights, he found the strength to shine, not on others, but for others, to make their lives a little bit warmer. 

This constant shining got the best of him. He died of exhaustion on a sidewalk on a cold November evening.

Those who knew him quickly forgot hit legacy, if they ever knew it, and save for his writings, nothing remains of him today. 

Except, maybe, a ray of contagious light, still travelling the universe. 

Let the board sound

Rabih