The Rose Field

As we were walking through the rose field, the old man was telling me what he thought about life.

“Life is hard, bleak and miserable and then we die”, he said, trampling upon a rose, “The sooner you learn that the better, my son”.

“Is it all miserable?”,  I asked, avoiding trampling on a rose, “Aren’t there nice things?”.

“Yes but they’re transient. Everything will fade, everything will disappear and ultimately everything is meaningless”, he said, trampling upon another rose.

“What about heaven? Is there no heaven after we die?”, I asked, avoiding trampling upon another rose.

“Heaven is just a delusion that we tell ourselves because we cannot bear to live with the fact that life is bleak, miserable and also meaningless”, he said, trampling upon yet another rose.

“I think you are missing one significant point, I said”, avoiding trampling on yet another rose.

“And what is that?”, he said, stopping and, by stopping, narrowly avoiding trampling upon another rose.

“We make life harder than it needs to be through our callousness and selfishness”, I said, stopping also, “We make life bleaker than it is naturally by our barbarism and our destruction and we make life more meaningless when we do not give value to anything or appreciate anything that is good or gentle or beautiful. 50 percent of life may be hard, bleak and possibly meaningless; but the other 50 percent is definitely us, not life”.

I directed the old man to look behind him at the roses he had just trampled on.

“It is your callousness and your large feet that have killed those roses”, I said, “You cannot blame life for it”.