Let me tell you the story of the man in the desert. This is a true story. No, not entirely, but almost. This is a tale I came up with many years ago, inspired by a dream I had, where I had thought to make a fun story out of it, because it was a funny dream. A little later I realized how much the moral of the story hits the nail on the head, when we think about how – or in what way many people meet the world. In that way, one can say that the story contains a core of truth.
The story is about a man who is walking in the desert. He is lost. And he is extremely thirsty. But he has no water left to drink. Time passes, and he just becomes thirstier and thirstier. He searches and searches for something to quench his thirst. But he is in a desert, where it is almost impossible to find water.
Just before the thirst becomes almost unbearable, he suddenly sees a house far away on the horizon under a palm tree. There must be water to drink! he thinks happily.
At first, he feels a great relief just at the thought that he will finally be able to quench this terrible thirst. He is enormously looking forward to the feeling when the water starts flowing down his throat. He is filled with new energy as he thinks about this, and now quickly walks towards the house.
But as he walks, he becomes uneasy. What if the house is just an illusion? But no, he gets closer, and the house and the palm tree do not disappear. It is a real house. He feels relieved again. But after a moment, the uneasiness returns.
What if there is no one in the house, and the door is locked? What if there is no water at all inside? Or what if there ARE people in the house, and they HAVE water, but they won’t let him drink from it?!
What if they turn him away at the door and just throw him out again? What if they will prevent him from getting anything to drink? The fear gnaws, and the sweat begins to emerge at the thought of this great disappointment.
His heart thumps loudly in his chest. He tries to make a plan for what he will say and do if the people who may be in that house really have the audacity to deny him the right to drink the life-giving water. Should he really stoop so low as to have to beg them for water?
In his imagination, he sees himself standing outside, knocking and knocking on the door more and more desperately, and trying to plead and implore the people inside for mercy, while they just pretend they neither hear nor see him. What if they want to humiliate him so much?!
The man has now almost reached the house. He sees that a camel is tied up outside. So there are, in fact, people inside the house. But this does not make him happy at all, because he is so full of suspicions and fear of what the people inside might do. The fear of not getting what he so desperately wants has taken control of him.
Why are they just sitting in there, as if everything is in perfect order? How can they afford to sit and enjoy themselves inside the door, while people are suffering outside?
He notices how unbearable the thirst is now. Good Lord, how unjust the world is! he thinks. Why should I have to endure this pain? He becomes more and more excited when he thinks about these ignorant, arrogant, selfish and unfriendly people inside, who will certainly deny him his human rights. Yes, what the hell do they think they’re doing?!! Who do they think they are?!
He has now come all the way to the door, being driven almost crazy by thirst, helplessness and hopelessness. He breathes heavily and hesitates for a moment, before decisively grabbing the door handle and turning it. The door is unlocked, and with a bang he flings the door wide open. With all the energy he has left in him, he angrily yells at the bewildered people inside the house:
“YOU KNOW WHAT?!! YOU CAN KEEP YOUR DAMN ROTTEN WATER FOR YOURSELVES!!!”
Then he slams the door shut again, almost dead from thirst, but still walks away with his head held high, proud that he dared to speak up for himself and say it straight out that he wouldn’t put up with being put down by such idiots and beg them for anything…!
….
Ah yes… In that way, fear and pride can prevent us from getting precisely what we want the most. Instead of calmly and quietly asking for what we want, we let ourselves be filled with fear and use all our energy on our own “foolish pride”, building up defenses that actually become bigger obstacles for ourselves.
The story raises several questions: Is the world really as bad as we sometimes think it is? Or is it just our own fear that is speaking? What is it we worry so much about? What is it we are trying so hard to protect ourselves against?
When we want something so incredibly much, the bottom can be laid for a lot of fear of others and fear of not getting what we want.
But it can be dangerous to believe in our own thoughts. The thoughts can lead us into irrational and self-destructive dead ends when they start creating their own “reality” that may have nothing to do with actual reality.
The story leads to a kind of moral. I believe that there are fundamentally two ways to meet life:
- You can meet life with distrust – or
- You can meet life with trust.
Regardless of whether you choose the one or the other, it has a very big impact on how you perceive and experience the world.
If you choose the first view, the chances are that you will give up in advance, because you don’t think it’s worth the effort anyway. You let your fear come between you and others and are quick to form your own conclusions about what others think and feel, without asking them what they really mean. At the same time, you demand that others must first prove that they are worthy of your respect before you dare to show them the same trust and respect that you demand of them. But when the others feel that you don’t trust them, and that you have already formed your own idea of them, they feel that you don’t listen to them, and then the risk increases that your interaction will end in disagreement and conflict – and/or that they distance themselves from you, which only confirms what you already believed: that people are not worth trusting. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
If you choose the other view, you have trust in others – until proven otherwise. You try to understand others by looking at the facts, instead of letting yourself be guided by emotional assumptions here and now. And you will of your own free will try to create respect and trust between you and others in recognition that you yourself have co-responsibility for the good relationship with your fellow human beings. This increases the possibility that you will also more often experience that mutual respect grows, which in turn increases the possibility that your relationships with others will be more balanced and harmonious.
Which view would you rather choose?
P.S.
Now, it may be that some are curious to know what happened to the man in the desert. No one knows. But there are two possibilities:
- Did the people in the house become so angry with him that they let him walk alone even further into the desert, where he ended up dying of thirst in deep loneliness and despair?
- Or were the people inside the house so sweet, good, and kind that they understood why he reacted the way he did, and therefore ran after him to calm him down and give him water, so that he survived – and later became best friends with them in gratitude?
I choose to believe in the latter possibility. 🙂
