an oyster once said to a neighbouring
oyster
i have a great pain within me it is
heavy and i am in distress
with pride and complacence the other
oyster replied
praise be to the heavens and the sea
i have no pain within me i am well and
whole both within and without
reading these two lines from a story i
closed the book
as a reader i am neither a sadist nor a
pessimist but i cannot deny that i
find pleasure in celebrating sadness
rather than a happy ending because that
seems more real
a happy ending doesn't so while reading
the story i found
myself deeply connected to the oyster
to the sad oyster now let me walk you
through
every subtle dimension of similarity
between the oyster
and the depressed sister
an oyster sleeps in peace in the
depth of the ocean like a monk
meditating in an ancient
cave if that's what you think you're
wrong like me and like us
oysters are also highly reactive
to externalities a foreign body
some say a grain of sand others say a
tiny worm
attacks the oyster and the oyster is
irritated just the way i am irritated
and disturbed
by something like a pandemic i get
disturbed
when i see the people around me dying
just the way you are disturbed
and because of these negative
externalities
i overthink i get sad make my
imaginations
wildest and gloomiest and then
celebrate sadness by mountains of
tissue paper and tubs and tubs of ice
cream
turns out the oyster does this too
the place where the foreign body hits a
pain
a distress is created and the oyster
also
overthinks and builds around that pain
the pain intensifies it solidifies
in that pain even the ocean is not kind
the waves of the ocean flip the oyster
again and again
just the way you toss and turn on your
bed in the middle of the night
thinking about the things that trouble
you
i could relate to the oyster how it must
have felt to contain grief inside
and then be carried away with grief from
outside
maybe that's why the oyster in the story
says
i have a great pain within me it is
heavy
and i am in distress
my fellow oysters if you are the sad
oyster
then the ending of gibran's story is for
you
when the two oysters were talking they
were overheard
by a crab and to the oyster without any
pain the crab says
yes you are well and whole both within
and without
you have no pain but the pain your
neighbor is
going through is actually a pearl
of exceeding beauty
trust me the pain you're going through
today is intensifying it is solidifying
to build a shiny pearl
the waves of the ocean is flipping you
tossing and turning you
because the continuous motion makes the
pearl
round and perfect
if you're going through pain today know
that the
oysters definition of pain is a pearl
just the way times definition of coal
is a diamond and the way shadow
is a remembrance of light
