So last night a friend told me the following story about a friend of his. Let’s call him David. David and his wife go to Paris. They have heard of a psychic who rearranges people’s souls with her brilliant insights. Though it is very difficult, David makes arrangements to see this psychic. On the appointed night, they go to a run-down apartment building in an equally run down neighborhood where they are told to stand in a dingy living room with few chairs for the dozen or so guests that are waiting to have their souls’ pathways revealed to them.
(In case you are wondering, you are hearing a little sarcasm in my storytelling)
They wait and wait. They are not comfortable. It smells bad. Sort of like garlic and farts. Finally, the psychic arrives. Only she looks like a hag. Clearly she is not benefitting from these supplicants’ visits nor does it look she cares. She stands underneath the bare lightbulb (Okay, I added that touch.) in the center of this room and looks at them. Then she says, “The problem is you think you are gods.”
David, his wife and the others stand there absorbing this bit of profane wisdom. They stare at the hag, expecting more. She stares back at each of them. David thinks this might be it. If his soul needed to be humbled, well, so be it. He looks at the psychic. This is not done.
Then she says, “The problem is you have forgotten you are gods.”
Maybe it was the lateness of the hour but when I heard the story, I laughed and laughed. “Isn’t that just us?” I thought. “On one had we think we are all powerful and on the other we forgot how powerful we can be when it comes to kindness and compassion.” But that’s just me. I tend to like stories where odd dichotomies wrestle with each other.
Oh…and I don’t think there is a moral to it at all. Unless you want to consider how I held it.