One world.
Many stories.
Only one is apparently supposed to apologize for existing.
Perhaps now is a good time to stop - forever - telling the wretched story?
....
We could perhaps reformulate it like this, as a bedtime story for children (yes, that's you too) -
....
There was once an old land with soft hills, quiet rivers and long roads that wound through the landscape like threads in a carpet. In this land there lived people who for many years loved to tell stories to their children, especially in the evening, when the day was ending and the world grew still.
The stories were about how the land had come to be. About people who had built houses, cultivated the earth and made rules to take care of each other, so the weak could feel safe and the strong knew they had a responsibility. The adults said that each person was more than what could be seen, and that life was not just something one had taken, but something one had been given, and therefore should be treated with care and reverence.
They also told the children that they were part of the land, just like the trees and the rivers. And that it was good to know where one came from, because it made it easier to figure out where one was heading.
The land had not always been easy to live in, they said, but people had again and again taken trouble, because they believed that Truth and Goodness were worth holding onto, even when it cost something.
But one day some of the stories began to disappear, not because they had been forbidden, but because new stories were brought in from outside and slowly took their place. Some adults, who had learned to see the world through stories that had come from far away, began to speak differently about the land, as if it were first and foremost a place full of mistakes that needed correcting, rather than a home that should be understood, loved and lived in.
They spoke more about everything that had gone wrong than about what had succeeded, and they often said that the old stories were outdated or dangerous if one took them too seriously.
The children felt the change before they fully understood it. Some became uncertain whether it was acceptable to love their land, and others stopped asking who had built the roads and houses they walked on every day, because the answers sounded as if they belonged somewhere else.
Gradually the old stories were told more quietly and less often, as if they were something one preferably shouldn't notice - not because they were untrue, but because the new voices spoke louder, and because it was easier to repeat them than to remember those that had grown from the land itself.
Slowly the land began to change in quiet ways. Not with noise or destruction, but with small signs that accumulated. The old songs were forgotten, and the words that once had helped people understand who they were were used less.
Some adults said there was no longer anything that spoke louder than people themselves, and the world became noisier but also emptier, as if something important had been forgotten without anyone quite knowing what. The paths in the forests grew over, because fewer knew where they led, and the signs that once had shown the way became faded, as if no one read them anymore.
It eventually became so stark that some children began to feel they didn't quite belong, even though they were born in the land and knew its roads and fields.
A child, who often walked home alone, noticed that the houses still stood there, but that they seemed quieter, as if they were waiting for something. When the child asked the adults who the land actually belonged to, it received answers that didn't really answer anything, and so the child sometimes stopped asking. Still, it felt as if the land wanted to say something, especially when the child walked through the forest or sat by the river and listened.
One evening, when the child couldn't fall asleep, it asked its great-grandfather why the land felt tired.
The old man sat for a long time without saying anything. He stared into the air, as if trying to remember something that hadn't been said for a long time. When he finally gathered himself he said - a land grows tired when it is no longer seen and remembered with love...
He said that stories are not there to make people wrong, but to remind them that they belong, and that one can tell the truth about what is difficult and still love one's home.
The very oldest, he said, had told that the world was once created in love, and that God was not far away, but near to those who cared for what they had been given. And he explained to the child that children do not carry the guilt for what came before them, but the responsibility for what comes after.
He said that some truths are not created by people - but discovered - and that when one learns again to listen quietly, one can feel that one does not stand alone, even when the road feels long. As long as someone walked the paths again and passed the stories on with care, a land could wake up, slowly, quietly, powerfully and fruitfully, just as the earth does when spring returns.
When the child went to bed that evening, the world no longer felt heavy, but serious in the good way, as when one is entrusted with something important. The child understood that the land was not waiting for strong words or grand plans, but for people who dared to remember, love and care for what they had been given, and who were willing to walk the paths again, even when they had grown over. It did not require being faultless, only being faithful, and carrying one's home forward with care.
Outside, the land lay still under the stars, not weak and not lost, but awake and patient, like something that knows its life is always carried forward through human hearts.
And so the child fell asleep, while the land kept watch, ready to be carried forward by those who could still remember that a home is not something to apologize for, but something one learns to love, before one day having to care for it oneself.
And while the child slept, the land was kept awake by a love that was there before them all.
❤️🔥🪽
