Stories Told Through Symbols 🌿

I am a small child. I sit on a bank of a swamp and look at the thick mud on the surface. I watch how bubbles sometimes escape from the swamp and rise up, because there is nothing else to do there. The land is barren, there are no people in sight, but behind the swamp I see tall trees and I want to see what is on the other side of the swamp, which is not far away. However, it is not possible to cross the swamp. Suddenly, a plank leading to the other side appears in the mud. I don’t know how it got there, but when I touch the surface of the swamp, I feel that the mud has partially solidified, and I could cross the mud by walking on the plank. The plank swings as I walk on it, and it is fun. I stop and sway it more and more until the plank under me breaks and I sink through the mud.

Suddenly, I find myself in a corridor where people are standing in line, all dirty from mud, just like me. I feel lost, so I give my hand to one of the men in the queue, but he just looks at me and pulls away. I am still a child; I stand in line and wait. I do not know what I am waiting for, but suddenly I am an adult. I ask one of the men where we are and what we are waiting for, and he tells me that it is an order. He looks at me suspiciously and angrily tells me that he will not let anyone take him away from here. People do not talk to each other; everyone is here on their own. I don’t want to be there, but it looks like there is nowhere else to go. The queue of people that has formed behind seems to have no end, so I get out of the queue and go to see where it leads. I am no longer in the queue, I am not ahead of anyone, so no one pays attention to me. Now I see what an advantage it is.

I am not walking long when I get to a big wooden wheel. Two people always take a person who does not resist in any way and load him or her on the wooden wheel. Then the wheel turns, and the person moves into a black metal cube. All I can hear is creaking and cracking, as a cube of meat appears on the belt that leads from the cube.

Now I see how wrong I was. I thought that I had to join the queue, that my opinion was not important, no one could hear me and there was no point in saying anything to other people. I was afraid that people would kill me, but that is not the case. If I stay in the queue, then what we are waiting for there, the metal cube machine, will kill me, that would be the final consequence of this decision.

From each side of the conveyor belt, strange stocky figures sit and neatly wrap the meat cubes in paper. They have a snout, long ears, small sunken eyes and no hair. They look like something between a person and a pig (I will call them pigs here, although they not really pigs). There is nothing scary about them. At first glance, they seem nice and talk cheerfully to each other. They may see me, but they ignore me. One pig takes a cube of meat and hides it under the belt. The other pig notices it, squeals, and two pigs come running, take the stocky body under their arms and drag it away. His place is immediately replaced by another pig.

I see that the pig who pointed this out already has two pieces of meat hidden under his belt. I ask him if he knows what he is packing. He answers that it is an order. I ask if they do not feel sorry for these people and the pig replies that if these people were in their place, they would behave in the same way. “Maybe they would even increase production and they would be even worse than us.” I think that this may be true. They use what is offered to them according to their own distorted concept of morality. If a person voluntarily lets himself be grounded into a cube of meat, then we are just a piece of meat that they can use.

I continue walking up to the place where the belt ends. Meat cubes are stacked on top of each other on a tile floor. The belt ends there, and the floor ends there too. As if we were somewhere high above the ground, because a free space opens up in front of me and I see a blue sky with white clouds. Then a white van arrives.

The driver gets out and I feel calmer when I see that he looks like a human. He loads the meat cubes into the van, and I notice that the white paper they are wrapped in has a print, but I cannot read what it says. The driver gets back in the car, starts the engine, and at that moment I jump onto the seat next to him. He is not surprised. We are going through the clouds, and I ask him what it is, where we are and where we are going. I ask if he knows what cargo he is carrying. The man just turns his head to me and opens his mouth wide. Hi mouth is huge, and I see two rows of white fangs. Then it gets dark.

I know the man ate me. But when I look around, I do not see darkness, I see the whole universe, stars and galaxies. It is a beautiful sight. I float through space. I realize that I am wearing a spacesuit, and I can see everything through the glass of my helmet. It feels peaceful, it is the kind of peace and quiet I long for. Here I could meditate for as long as I want, experience deep relaxation, but I feel uneasiness in my stomach. It is not fear, it is just the feeling that something is wrong. I do not understand anything that is happening around me and the only thing I can control is my body. It tells me that the peace around me is only apparent. I realize that if I lived in the present moment now, I could be happy. But I cannot forget those mud people who followed the order. I cannot forget the white fangs of the driver in whose stomach I am now.

Suddenly there is a white fog all around me. When it disappears, I see a tall figure of a man in a white robe (I will call him a wanderer). He has long white hair and a beard and he is holding a cane in his hand. He is walking steadily. Full of strength and energy, he is climbing a high mountain until he finally reaches the top of it. He looks at the blue sky with white clouds and looks down at the landscape below him. I feel relieved and calm. I realize that the blue sky and open space I saw a moment ago were the possibilities that we will never reach because someone is always in charge of our lives, just like the driver of the van.

The wanderer suddenly turns into a bird. He is flapping his wings and I feel that I am also flapping them, and I can see through his eyes. I feel real freedom. We fly over the countryside and return along the path I have travelled. We fly over a van, over pigs, over people standing in a queue. I am waiting for something that would tell me the best way to follow this path. I am waiting for any clue that would show me what was happening on my way and how to change it. But nothing like that is coming. I’m already climbing through the mud.

I am by the swamp again and I see the child, clean and radiant, sitting on the bank, watching the bubbling water. A wanderer appears by the child. He sits next to the child and talks to him. He shows him the plank and tells him that now he must go to the other side and must not stop. Suddenly, I stand on the plank next to the child and I take his hand. We cross the swamp and walk among the tall trees. We walk carefully on the soft moss, on which the sun’s rays fall among the trees, and flowers of different colours and sizes that grow everywhere. I would love to stay in this place, but we have to keep going.

A circular stone house appears in front of us. When we enter, I see eleven men sitting at a round table. They look just like the wanderer. They are full of strength and energy, and they are waiting there for the wanderer. I tell them that he showed us the way across the swamp. They are delighted and give us warm blankets. We keep going until we reach the next house. A woman is standing on her doorstep, asking if we have met a man with a white beard because she is waiting for him to come. I tell her he stayed on the other side of the swamp, and he helped us cross it. She is happy to hear that the man was willing to help us. She immediately brings us a loaf of bread and wishes us a safe journey. We come to a field where a man is ploughing the land. He also asks about the man with a white beard, because he is waiting for him. When we tell him that he sent us here, he immediately offers us warm soup. Finally, we meet a beautiful blond woman. She tells us that the wanderer is her husband. When we tell her that he came to us on the other side of the swamp and helped us get to the other side, she holds the child close to her and says that now we do not have to go anywhere anymore. Here is our home where the child can grow up.

The uneasiness I felt disappears and a feeling of deep peace fills me.

Yet I still can’t shake the feeling that I remained in that driver’s stomach – I just forgot about it.

Thank you for visiting and I look forwards to seeing you at the next story.🍀

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