The Thing

By LG Wilkinson 

‘The Thing’ is a story, which shows how if we are not careful our thoughts become things and things become more important than people. How coveting things leads to jealousy and jealousy turns to anger and then fear and loathing. If we are not careful those thoughts of fear and loathing turn to hatred and it is hatred that causes war.

When we come into the world we enter void of hatred or judgment and for the most part without thought at all beyond the need to survive. As children we live in the moment and to the best of our knowledge our default mechanism is love and caring. It is only as we grow up that our thoughts become ones of judgment. So strong are these thoughts that they take on a life of their own and become things. Those things then gain a value and soon begin to shape our lives and in turn the way we think and so begins the cycle.

As children it is only when we lose our innocence that we become effected by the value of those thoughts, up until that moment it if difficult for us to see anyone or anything as being bad or different. If we see another person who is not the same as us we simply have the thought that they are black or tall or bigger than us and generally that is the end of it, it was a thought that really has no value other than an observation. How then do we go from thoughts being a simple mechanism to identify our world, to those same thoughts which rule our beliefs about the way that world is?

While in life you cannot have an up without a down, a left without a right or good without bad, I do believe that hatred and evil are something that are taught and learned not inherent within us at birth.

So please read this book and look at the world through the eyes of a child and see the world as a better place.

 The Thing

Once upon a time, (which is how all good tales begin) there lived a very clever man named David and a little girl named Paige.

David cared very much about Paige and it was soon to be her birthday, and the celebration of a birthday is a very special Thing indeed.

David worked very hard and wanted so much to spend the whole day with Paige who would be five.

David stopped for a moment and put down his tools. He stopped for a moment to think and in that moment came a thought and the thought became an image and the image became a thing. A thing that would make it possible to cut David’s work in half and in doing so he could spend more time with people and especially Paige.

So David made the thing according to the image of the thought that he'd had. The Thing was a great invention, because he could now do all of his work in half of the time. So David, having completed all of his work for the week, planned to spend all of Friday with Paige.

When the people at the birthday party found out about the Thing which David had invented and how it cut his work in half and how he could spend more time with friends and family......well, everybody wanted one so they might do the same.

So David, being a kind person, set about making Things for people that would help them with their work.

It seemed like a good Thing to do, but very soon making all the Things took up all of David’s spare time and, even though he had invented the Thing to spend more time with people....he seemed to be spending less time than before.

At first David was annoyed, but then he had a thought. If he could teach some of the other people how to make Things, then they could make enough Things for everyone and then they could all spend more time with friends and family.

It seemed like a good idea at first, but the people who were making all the Things spent so much time doing so, that they seemed to spend very little time with other people at all.

The problem now was the people who were making all the Things were working twice as hard as they had before the Thing was invented. This was very odd considering that the Thing was invented so people could work less and spend more time together.

Along with this, something else began to happen.

Some of the people with Things began to make deals with one and other. They started trading their Things for bigger and better Things. Now those people were able to spend much more time with each other and work a lot less.

As for the people making all the Things....well, they only got to spend time with each other and most of that was spent making Things for other people.

This was about the time that people’s thoughts began to change and they  started to come up with names for Things like, Resentment and Jealousy.

These were names given to feelings that people had who were working hard to make Things for all the other people.

Then something really odd happened.

The people with bigger and better Things began to think they were actually…. different to the people who had less Things, and as for the people with fewer or no Things...well, they simply were not as good.

Soon, the only Thing that people could think and talk about were Things. How many? How big? How different?

The people who had all the Things started to group together because it seemed to them that they did not have as much in common with the people who had fewer Things.

Now a whole new list of names for Things came up like Segregation and Discrimination. And then one day, just like that, as though people had never really mattered at all, Things suddenly became more important than people! At least that’s what they thought.

 Now David, who really had only one goal which was to go to Paige’s birthday party and spend more time with friends and family, rarely got to see Paige at all because he spent very little time outside the big smoky factory which he had built to make all of the Things for all the people.

One day, David walked to the window in his big office in the big factory he had built and looked out of the window and saw...

NOTHING!

Once where there had been grass and trees and meadows and streams, David could only see pollution. Pollution that had been created from the factory. The factory that he had built to make all the Things.

David gave a heavy sigh and looked again at the mess that had been caused and wished Things could go back to how they used to be before Things became more important than People. And with that, his thoughts were truly sad.

Now a different problem had arisen. Some people were spending more time with other people but only to talk about Their Things and to cast judgment on the people who had fewer Things. David began to see more Segregation and what quickly followed was that People became Things.

Suddenly instead of just being people, we became, Black and White. Men and Women. Catholics and Jews. Straight and Gay. Good and Bad. Right and Wrong!

What happened next can only be considered a tragedy. The people with all the Things took all of their Things and built a wall. A wall that separated Black from White. Catholics from Jews. Men from Women. Fat people from Thin people. Gay people from Straight. And worst of all,

ME FROM YOU!

The tragedy got worse when people created Things that could kill people. Now they could simply take away the Things that other people had worked hard to get. People could now have more power over other people with less Things, which added to more Segregation! More Discrimination! More Suffering. More Things. More Things! MORE THINGS!! 

I believe they call it

WAR!

One day, David took his fifteen-minute lunch break and he decided to go for a walk in what was left of the park where he had grown up as a child. The park which had once had trees and flowers and streams and fields and… well, there was not much there now. He sat down on a boulder, which was all that was left of the park, and sighed and wondered if Things could ever be the same again?

He must have sat there for a very long time, past his fifteen-minute break, when to his surprise he saw Paige. Now by this time Paige had had two more birthdays and was now, what seemed to David, all grown up. David was very sad that he had missed both of Paige’s birthdays. But Paige smiled as children do because children are loving and forgiving.

She looked for a moment and then asked.

“David, why are you so sad?”

“Because I have lots of things, but no one to share them with,” he answered.

“Why is that?” asked Paige.

David sighed. “Because I have built a wall and they are on one side and I am on the other and I do wish we could all be on the same side.

Paige thought for a while and then when she could see no real problem she said. “Why don’t you get them on your side?”

“Because the wall is too high and they cannot get over it.”

It sounded to David like a very good explanation and he went into great detail about how he had invented the first thing in order to go to Paige’s fifth birthday party and then how everyone had wanted their own Things, which he had thought was a good idea in the beginning. But now Things had become more important than people.

“And so you see.” said David. “I have created a very big problem. I am on one side of the wall and they are on the other and there is no way we can all be on the same side again.”

Paige had listened very carefully and she thought for a while and then said. “Have you asked them if they would like to be on your side of the wall?”

David looked at her and was very embarrassed. Then Paige gave a sigh as only children do, and said. “You haven't, have you?”

Paige looked at David and she seemed amazed that he had not asked them, because a little Thing called Innocence would not allow Paige to believe there really was much of a problem.

“You see.” continued Paige. “It’s really quite simple. If I want to play with someone I just ask them. If they say yes then we play and if they say no, then we don’t. But, I always ask, that way I know for sure what the answer is.”

David thought for a moment and then a smile came on his face.

“Paige, you are so clever! I have been so caught up a Thing called Judgment, that I just thought they could not or would not want to climb the wall.”

Then Paige with her childlike wisdom said. “You should ask you know, it’s rude to keep people waiting.”

David gave her a huge hug and thanked her and went off to ask them.

At first it was easy, he simply asked the people who were like him, and, like him they were tired of being alone behind the wall they had built. Then it became more difficult when he had to ask people who were not so much like him. By the time he reached those who were very different to him it became very hard indeed. But, he thought of Paige and kept going. It was uncomfortable but he kept asking and to his surprise people kept saying yes.

David kept going until there were only four people left on the other side of the wall.

The Fat Black Man, The Spotty Faced Girl with Glasses, the Slant Eyed Man and The Gay Guy.

At first David was very pleased. It had taken a long time and it had been very uncomfortable at times but as he stood there with, The Fat Black Man, The Spotty Faced Girl with Glasses, the Slant Eyed Man and The Gay Guy on one side of the wall and him on the other he was filled with remorse because there are two sides to a wall. They were on one side and he was on the other, which meant that there were not four, but five people with a wall, which divided them.

David went and sat down on his boulder again as he realized that this was in-fact the biggest challenge of his life.

The Fat Black Man, The Spotty Faced Girl with Glasses, the Slant Eyed Man and The Gay Guy began to distance themselves from David.

He jumped up and a strange feeling came over him. Not one of fear of them but a fear of what would happen if they did not all get over the wall. What would become of them or him or anyone for that matter?

“Excuse me.” David hesitated. “I was wondering...that is, I was thinking...well more than thinking really.”

The Fat Black Man, The Spotty Faced Girl with Glasses, the Slant Eyed Man and The Gay Guy all looked at him. David felt very uncomfortable. He realized that he had now become the minority.

People, who were not like those who had a lot of Things, were sometimes referred to as a minority, people who were different in looks or beliefs or choice of lifestyle. It would seem that the shoe was now on the other foot and it was David who had become a Thing. A Minority.

There in the dim light of Judgment he saw the wall and himself for what it had become, just another Thing.

Fear and Prejudice. Hate and Anger. Racism, Slander and Ridicule.

He stammered on...

“You see, I thought we, well I really, have built a wall between us and in order to feel the sunshine on our faces, and see the trees and fields, we must all climb the wall and be on the same side. But, the problem is, I, believe that none of us, well speaking for myself at least, I, cannot climb the wall alone and I would dearly love to see the other side of the wall again. I would love to see it with you. To do that, I believe we need to climb the wall together. Please, I need your help.”

 In that instant he realized that what Paige had said, was in fact true. That all he had to do was ask and by doing so there was not only the possibility of climbing the wall together, but in fact the wall no longer existed. All it had ever been was only real in David’s thoughts.

Instead there were flowers and trees and fields and streams. In-fact that’s all there had ever been but for being blinded by Thoughts.

The real miracle was that instead of The Fat Black Man, The Spotty Faced Girl with Glasses, the Slant Eyed Man and The Gay Guy, there were just four people, well five really because David was on the same side of the wall.

Five people, all of who had hopes and dreams, fears and love and compassion for the world they lived in.

Paige skipped by and saw what David had done. She stopped and gave him a hug and said.

“Will you come to my next birthday party I will be eight, you can bring your friends if you would like to?”

The Beginning