Reflections

Reflections

I am sitting on a rock beside a small pond. The sun is shining brilliantly on the clear water and I can see my reflection on its clear surface. I pick up a stone and gently throw it into the pond and in an instant my face shatters as the water ripples to the edges. The miraculous perfection is disturbed and I am reminded of more than a small pond on a sunny day.

In this world we live in, where so often life tends to be cruel and unfair we forget about the positive aspects of our lives, concentrating rather on the negative. We interpret the ripples in the water as imperfections and we dwell on and mould our existence around them. In this way we create our own tortured souls, feeding them with a desire to be faultless and perfect. We create in our minds what we should be like, a fictitious idea of what others wish for us to become and we strive to make ourselves into another of societies puppets. With every string that is pulled a small part of our heart is lost, lost to the misconception that we may not be our true selves, but must erect a wall around us to impress all those with whom we interact.

The string for our mouths is tugged and we begin to say things we do not mean. Words flow from our lips almost without our own consent and we are not even aware of the hurt we cause. In a similar way society pulls at the strings which control our hands and feet and we find ourselves in situations we never thought possible, doing things we never anticipated we would. And now, as I look into the pond at my reflection I hardly know who I am anymore. My mind and soul have been meddled with and stolen from me.

In one part of the pond a fine moss is slowly growing over its surface and I notice for the first time that this parasite has covered a small portion of my reflection. I realize that the greenness could so easily and silently creep over the pond and cloud my whole face so that not even a tiny inch of it can be seen and I know that I have a choice to make. Either I can allow this to happen and continue living forever underneath a sheet of moss, or I can make a conscious effort to add algaecide in the form of courage and perseverance to kill the moss and remove it from the pond, and ultimately my life.

Immediately I am amazed to see that as soon as I look past the ugliness and disturbing ripples, beauty creeps into my fragile ecosystem. My eyes are opened to a lily floating in the middle and all my tears cease. All at once the positive aspects of my life can be seen. The miracle of life and all that it represents is portrayed through a mother duck and her six ducklings swimming in a close trail behind her. All is well and I am content and happy. Bit by bit I become my own person as society can no longer grasp me. I break my puppet strings and I transform from wood to flesh.

I realize that even in winter when the pond freezes over, life continues underneath the ice. Spring inevitably comes around and the sun shines, once again melting the ice.

Quickly before I leave, I take one last look at my reflection in the pond. That first stone, which I threw into the water has long since sunk to the bottom and there is not a ripple anywhere in sight. The perfection has been restored. My mirrored reflection stares back at me and the tranquility of the day is reflected in my soul.

Reviews

[Kiya]

Very true! Makes me think a lot about many different things...