We were promised an even scale.
A perfect geometry of joy and grief.
So we lined up to collect.
I was patient.
I was the open door,
stepping aside for the weak, the old, the frantic.
I anchored my feet in the dust
believing the divine well was bottomless.
Then came my turn.
The cup was empty.
I looked at the Creator,
and He offered me nothing but silence.
My faith, a trembling leaf in the cold.
Now, the fortunate scold me for my questions.
The empty-handed offer me the ghost of Hope.
But Hope is a starving thing.
And my anger, my despair,
they are beasts outgrowing their cages,
bursting the seams of my skin.
I cannot hold them.
I cannot hold this life.
I only wish the clay had stayed quiet,
and He had never shaped me at all.
—
This poem is an adaptation created by Gemini using my story and captures the time when everything was going bad and I felt broken, unfulfilled, and almost faithless. I would not say that my life has drastically improved since, but I still have faith. I have been reading the Vedanta philosophy, Bhagavad Gita’s interpretation from the eyes of Swami Vivekananda, and I feel that we shouldn’t always be comparing and our motive is also not to achieve happiness always. It’s just a part of life.
—
The Original Story
There was once a God. He created everything and was supposed to be fair. Fair would mean that he would distribute the share of all the good and bad experiences, moments of happiness and sorrow, success and failures, prosperity and hardship, in equal measures, among the ones he created.
He asked everyone to stand in a queue and come one by one to collect their shares. Happiness was getting distributed. Since he is the God I assumed he had things in enough abundance. I was kind enough to let people stand in front of me. I didn’t hurry, I let the old, the weak and the excited people take my position in the queue. I had the ability to be patient and stand for a long time. I was being kind to others and let everyone take their shares first.
By the time my turn came, happiness got over. I looked at him, and he did nothing. This is what I get for my kindness I wondered. I waited too long and got anger and despair instead. My faith was quivering. The ones who got their share looked down upon me for questioning God. Even some of the ones who didn’t get their share looked at me and asked me to have hope.
Hope is all I have now and is what keeping me sane. I’m just scared that it’s getting lesser as time passes by. My anger and despair are growing out of their shoes. They need more space and somehow I’m not able to contain them any longer. I wish God hadn’t created me at all!