One email brought excitement amid the doldrums in a plagued summer morning.
Tim's piece won an award and he's invited to a recital at the Carnegie Hall. Mom
was elated outright: it was one victory in a long path of envisioned victories
toward the peak of success in life. Tim couldn't help it, either, for a slightly
different reason: after 20 months of being cooped up, he gets to see the NYC!
Dad, the futureless middle-aged semi-depressed killjoy, who could twist any good
news into a gloomy prophesy, however, recounted two stories.
The first was from a 2019 article published in the New Yorker Magazine by the
Japanese author Haruki Murakami:
We had a little white kitten. I don’t recall how we came to have it, because
back then we always had cats coming and going in our home. But I do recall
how pretty this kitten’s fur was, how cute it was.
One evening, as I sat on the porch, this cat suddenly raced straight up into
the tall, beautiful pine tree in our garden. Almost as if it wanted to show
off to me how brave and agile it was. I couldn’t believe how nimbly it
scampered up the trunk and disappeared into the upper branches. After a
while, the kitten started to meow pitifully, as though it were begging for
help. It had had no trouble climbing up so high, but it seemed terrified of
climbing back down.
I stood at the base of the tree looking up, but couldn’t see the cat. I
could only hear its faint cry. I went to get my father and told him what had
happened, hoping that he could figure out a way to rescue the kitten. But
there was nothing he could do; it was too high up for a ladder to be of any
use. The kitten kept meowing for help, as the sun began to set. Darkness
finally enveloped the pine tree.
I don’t know what happened to that little kitten. The next morning when I
got up, I couldn’t hear it crying anymore. I stood at the base of the tree
and called out the kitten’s name, but there was no reply. Just silence.
Perhaps the cat had made it down sometime during the night and gone off
somewhere (but where?). Or maybe, unable to climb down, it had clung to the
branches, exhausted, and grown weaker and weaker until it died. I sat there
on the porch, gazing up at the tree, with these scenarios running through my
mind. Thinking of that little white kitten clinging on for dear life with
its tiny claws, then shrivelled up and dead.
The experience taught me a vivid lesson: going down is much harder than
going up. To generalize from this, you might say that results overwhelm
causes and neutralize them. In some cases, a cat is killed in the process;
in other cases, a human being.
The second was the biblical story of the doubting Thomas in John Chapter 20(KJV).
24 But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when
Jesus came.
25 The other disciples therefore said unto him, We have seen the Lord. But
he said unto them, Except I shall see in his hands the print of the
nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand
into his side, I will not believe.
26 And after eight days again his disciples were within, and Thomas with
them: [then] came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst,
and said, Peace [be] unto you.
27 Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands;
and reach hither thy hand, and thrust [it] into my side: and be not
faithless, but believing.
28 And Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God.
29 Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast
believed: blessed [are] they that have not seen, and [yet] have believed.
To hide his jealousy, dad claimed self-righteously that to him, success meant to
love yourself without worldly success to prop it up. Of course, it's easy for him
to say: he fits into the picture, the lack-of-success part in particular, perfectly! :-)
