THE CHEESE OF HUMANITY

One learns more from suffering than one learns from happiness; and failures too are better teachers than success.

The recent warning from the North Korean foreign minister regarding the nuclear test over the Pacific Ocean is one more lesson of pain which perhaps the world is getting ready for.

Peace has begun to pray that the rising tensions between North Korea and the US may not ever see the most powerful detonation of a hydrogen bomb.

This potential happening brings to my mind a story which I had often heard as a child and which laboured to teach that fight only led to sad faces at the end of the day.

The story, ‘A clever monkey and two cats’, showed two greedy and angry felines fight over a flat round cheesy bread and then aptly jumped in a clever monkey to make peace between the two, offering to bite off the pieces of the flat bread and make even distribution. In his conniving attempt of fairness he kept biting into the bread filling up his ever hungry tummy and working to make the loaf into a visibly equal share for the foolish cats. Finally when just a little bit was left, the understanding of futility of warring dawned on the foolish cats who then thought it better to have a little of what was left rather than let it all go into the clever monkey’s stomach. The smart Simian then took away the last bite also, demanding it as his fees for his greedy labour.

It’s amazing that a world educated on the sorrows of the two horrendous world wars has no flinching before moving onto the third one. The lessons of history seem to have been lost to the pompous politicians and history is getting ready to repeat itself.

It’s a fearful moment with the potency of total annihilation that the world at large is ignoring and perhaps even blinded too.

At this moment I realize the depth of ‘The Lord’s Prayer’ which ends with the words, “Don’t bring us into temptation, but deliver us from the Evil One.” These temptations are so varied! Those of ego and pride, those of earthly desires of temporary treasures which will in time erode away. All those ideologies leading to violence and those evil thoughts leading to deep darkness!

This super intelligent age in which man is making cosmic mats to attract aliens on this planet and make them feel at home is all set up with the nuclear arrows to destroy his human neighbour.

This super conscious world, with all its knowledge of food and nutrition has astonishingly forgotten all about the food that enriches one’s soul.

Humanity today is at stake and the voice of conscience keeps knocking at man’s door but he is engrossed in making choices of wine and pleasure at his neighbours. His ears strain to hear the call of the world and he turns deaf to the call of his Spirit which is in jeopardy of getting lost.

This man’s self-destructive capacity is certainly one of a kind. The evil sufferings of the two World Wars left him empty. To survive, he cleansed that emptiness with forgiveness, for there was no other alternative for moving on; but the vacuum remained. He should have filled that empty space with lessons of ‘never again’ but instead he filled the hollow with perishable joys.

“This evil nation is like a man possessed by a demon. For if the demon leaves, it goes into the deserts for a while, seeking rest but finding none. Then it says, ‘I will return to the man I came from.’ So it returns and finds the man’s heart clean but empty. The demon finds seven other spirits more than itself, and all enter the man and live in him. And so he is worse off than before.” Matthew 12: 43, 44, 45.

A few hopeful questions which keep probing my mind are, ‘Will this humanity give up to the strength of the devil, or will it grab back the cheesy Bread and chew on it to survive?’ ‘Will it understand that in every war, the Devil takes away the cheese of humanity?’ Today the call for man is urgent. There is a pressing need for him to transform from being a human being to being human.

(pics. courtesy: Google)