A boy flies through a dark galaxy, far away in space. An ordinary one, the kind you meet every day and maybe don’t even notice. One who hides a lot of beauty and sensitivity. He flies, drifts and looks for a place for himself in this vast world, although he has no idea how to get there.
He is a little lost, and a little curious about what will happen to him. And now he sits on his space machine, gray, in the shape of a flat rhombus, with lots of lights and switches, and looks forward trustingly. I watch the shiny, beautifully shimmering stars – the single ones and those in constellations, orbits and moons, meteorites and everything else you can imagine. He glides, floats, not bothering anyone. He sits cross-legged, calm, only humming a pleasant melody in his head.
At some point he noticed that something had changed. He reached a place where small, hurtful, sharp stones appeared, falling at the speed of light. He began to feel them in his body. He realized that they were sticking in such a way that it was difficult to pull them out, and if they did manage to do so – the wounds took a very, very long time to heal.
At some point he realized that they were approaching the planet Earth, and these hurtful little stones that suddenly appeared in space were words and thoughts that people said to each other, but sometimes to themselves. The more they shouted, the more they blamed themselves, the more they wanted to pay someone back for their unpleasantness – the more hurtful little stomes in space. And therefore, the more difficult the journey for our friend on the space machine.
– What now? What can I do? – thought the increasingly terrified, sensitive boy. He began to suffer so much from these sharp and hurtful words in a cosmic, fairy-tale form that he began to nervously search for a solution.
– It doesn’t have to be perfect, it doesn’t have to be forever, the most important thing is that it protects me. I need to rest, breathe, calmly take out everything that’s stuck in me, heal the wounds.
– I know! I know what I’ll do! Sometimes a hood protected me from the wind, but what if I created something in its shape that would cover not only my ears and head, but my whole self? Such a cosmic barrier! Everything will bounce off it, nothing will get through it, no word from Earth will hurt me anymore, no painful silence that people give themselves, no revenge, no unspoken grievance. I will be safely cut off from all this.
And because our traveler, as is often the case in fairy tales, all he had to do was imagine such an indestructible hood and poof, it appeared to protect him.
And so he drifted on, under this safe dome, enjoying this moment of respite and peace, being cut off from everything. Thus he floated, glided through space feeling protected and safe.
However, at first he did not notice that he was also cut off from other things – from falling comets and meteorites, from the pleasant and calm gusts of wind that he liked so much, from fascinating views that had previously been unknown to him, from mysterious planets and spaces. It was only later that all this dawned on him. Only later did he begin to realize that being so tightly covered he could not breathe freely.
Yes, it was true that there were no new wounds, but when he touched the old ones, they still hurt a lot. They didn’t have enough fresh air to heal, and it was the air that was needed for that.
He drifted on, not thinking much about it though.
The next days passed, and he became sadder and sadder, more and more subdued, and more and more often it seemed to him as if he himself were made of stone.
Yes, he felt safe, that’s true, but he also stopped feeling many other things, such as joy, peace, or excitement. These were already so distant to him, such faded and indistinct feelings, that he couldn’t even remember what caused them. He began to fear that in a while he wouldn’t be able to recall them at all, and that only some unspoken emptiness would remain.
– What now? – our friend began to wonder – although this solution has been tested for a long time, is it still working for me? I think it’s time to change something.
The first thing that came to his mind was to check if the hurtful little stones were still there and falling in the galaxy. They were, although not as many as before, because they had already flown away a bit.
– If there are little stones that hurt, maybe somewhere there fall some that soothe, fill with faith and hope?
And he started searching.
– But how to know them? – he thought. – I’m not sure, but maybe I’ll just feel it inside me. After all, if I felt that something hurt me, now I’ll feel that something strengthens me.
And he did find it – a place where what fell gave solace, caressed and understood, sympathized and caused a pleasant warmth inside. Only to use their power he had to expose himself to it. To throw away the barrier that cut him off from bad, but also from good things.
It took him a long time to break through, but slowly he began to open his hood wider, uncertainly, hoping that something good would happen to him. And the more he took it off, the better he began to feel.
Now he learned that he puts on the protective hood only when he really needs it, but there are also safe, beautiful and airy places without which he could not live happily.
He also learned something else later – that these words, stinging, hurting, causing so much suffering, can actually be changed, enchanted and made so that they do not penetrate deeply into the body, but we bounce off it funny.
He understood that they are driven by misunderstanding, that they are in fact the pain of the person who caused them to come into being. They are about their hardships and, when looked at with empathy, they soften and no longer have power.
Knowing all this today – he drifted on calmly, as he had once done in search of his place. Richer, however, with experiences that he had not expected, and which taught him so much and which he could pass on in the galaxy, so that everyone would know what to do when they ended up in the same place with hurtful little stones.
