The Balance

There was once a man; a very sad, lonely man; alone with visions that he could not show or explain to anyone; terrible visions of something called ‘The Balance’.

 

“Why have you picked me to see these things”, he asked in a desperate voice but the voices that echoed in the man’s head only answered, “Because others have the fortune of not seeing them”.

 

And what did the man see that was so terrible; often so terrible that it made him want to tear his own eyes out with grief?

 

Every piece of the man’s own good fortune, he could see balanced out by someone else’s suffering.

 

Fate, you see, was not, in his visions, a person or a god but a cold, ruthless, self-regulating machine  and part of that mechanism was an enormous set of scales; on one side of which was a pan of gold and on the other a pan of cold steel.

 

The man could hear the gears of the machine grinding as the world turned around him; he could hear the machine’s deafening ticks like a giant clock beneath the surface of reality and he could see the scales tipping ; apportioning happiness to one whilst handing out brutal misery to another.

 

Oh, but you musn’t feel too sad for the man because he had had an exceptionately fortunate youth. He had been born, you see, into one of the richest families in Europe; his father had been an international banker and insurance broker and he had inherited his fathers company. He had also gone to a very exclusive public school  and had had the luxurious, fun filled kind of childhood that most children can only ever read or dream about.

 

But then, as suddenly as a car crash or a heart attack or an earthquake or some other terrible misfortune, he started to have nightmares and daymares of death and bloody carnage; grinding poverty and horrifying sickness; the brutality of war; the viciousness of crime; terror and torture and murder and the visions would appear to him, either within his mind or in front of him, always when he had personal happiness in his own life.

 

When the man got married, for example, to the beautiful daughter of a wealthy shipping magnate, what should have been a happy occasion was made into a nightmare by visions of blood staining the brides expensive designer gown; blood cascading down over the tiers of the enormous wedding cake and blood encrusting the million dollar platinum and gold wedding ring and then he saw the source of all the blood; dead bodies of children lying scattered across the cathedral floor.

 

“Why children?”, he asked, gripping his head in pain.

 

But then, when he should have been at his wedding reception, he was watching news on the television of how a shooter had broken into a school and shot 30 children dead.

 

And then, behind it all, he heard the noise of the ruthless, unceasing machine; its wheels turning and its scales tipping; pouring out golden coins for one and blood and darkness for another.

 

“It’s not fair”, he said, weeping and shaking, “It’s not fair, not fair”.

 

But it was fair; brutally fair; the machines equal distribution of fortune and misery; accurately weighing them out to the last speck of gold dust and the last drop of blood.

 

He tried talking to someone of course though not his family or friends because he could not afford to let it be known that he was cracking up; to let people think he wasn’t fit to control his company because that would have meant disaster for his career.

 

But he secretly sought out the help of professional doctors and psychiatrists.

 

“You’re simply suffering from a guilt complex”, was their general reply, “But you have to realise that you are not the cause of the world’s sufferings; they would always occur no matter what you do”.

 

They told him that he should enjoy his life; that he should count himself lucky; see the positive side to everything.

 

But he knew, as he listened to them that they knew nothing; that they spoke either out of blindness or the desire to hide their eyes which was something that he was not able to do.

 

“Why must it be so?”, he asked.

 

“Because people want too much”, a voice replied, “Less good fortune for some would mean less suffering for others but the more that men and women seek to tip the scales on one side the more they must be raised on the other”.

 

“Well can’t people change? Can’t they be happy with less?”, he asked.

 

“The machine has tried to achieve equilibrium many times before; sending out its clockwork bell ringers like Siddhartha and Jesus but people don’t like being told how to live their lives; they associate their avarice with their freedom not realising that it’s their greed which keeps them a slave”.

 

And so the man, because he felt  that death would be the only other avenue of escape from his nightmares, gave up everything that he owned; he gave up his commercial empire; his beautiful wife; his several billion dollar houses and apartments; his luxurious life of private jets and chauffeur driven cars and instead chose to live a poor, simple and hard life and then, as suddenly as they had started, his nightmares stopped.

 

But the machine did not stop; its wheels and gears continued to turn and its scales, to see-saw this way and that.

 

“I can’t stop it”, he said, “Only people can do that but they have to choose freely to do it for themselves; preach to them and they won’t listen; force them and they’ll fight back; they have to see the scales as I saw them, with their own eyes and then, maybe, things might change”.