Continued…
When the old man got to his home, he was fuming with rage. He had not even realised how quickly he had covered the distance between his home and the orchard owner’s homestead. Fury blinded his eyes and he could feel rage humming like an enraged swarm of bees around him. He needed to vent. He needed to unwind to free up the fury and anger of so many years.
He sat on the carved stool and held his head betwixt his knees. The swirl of emotions took him to the day he had eaten the sweetest orange of his life. The day he had chosen the biggest seed and planted it only for it to betray him .
He remembered the lost time. The effort he had put on making sure the tree did not die or suffer being ravaged by urchins and prowlers , and the tree had let him down.
He remembered the fruit. The sour fruit that had dashed an eight year dream and killed all his zeal for optimism. The fruit that had refused to reward him for his efforts.
He remembered the humiliation that had turned him into an recluse. He remembered how he felt comfortable spending more hours in his semi darkened hut such that he had to reduce his eyes to a serious squint every time he had to step outside. The fruit had stolen his vision, his happiness, his zeal and his quest for a productive life. The tree and the fruit had emasculated him.
He rembered the ‘taunt’ by the orchard owner, he felt the leering eyes of the whole village on him as he had walked to the orchard owner’s homestead .
As all came together, he realised that he had been turned into a raging man. He rose to go to the tool shed. He had to do something. He had to get the root of this blatant stigma attached to him.
Tomorrow morning, he was going to cut down the cursed tree. Dig up the saplings around it, shovel the carpet of years of rotten fruit into a deep pit and burn all that remained .
He had missed the lesson his father had always impressed upon him :
Sour rage blinds one to the reality and paves the path to destroying the fruit of good .
Tomorrow he was going to cut the sour umbilical cord. He was going to be finally free….
“Be not hasty in thy spirit to be angry; for anger resteth in the bosom of fools.”
Ecclesiastes 7:9 ASV
http://bible.us/12/ecc.7.9.asv
To be continued….