The Cure
[#21] A 100-word story on looking up from our suffering
The Cure
An isolated, old man became ill. He was prescribed walking the streets of his town. On the first day, he came upon two poor children playing in the dirt.
He tried to stop them, “Stop playing in the dirt. You’ll get sick!”
The kids ignored him. He tried again.
This time they responded, “Why?”
“So when you eat, you have clean hands,” he countered, lamely.
The kids laughed, “There’s nothing to eat. We play and forget that.”
Realizing his folly, the old man started helping the kids. His ills disappeared. But he never stopped walking the streets of his town.
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reena | 12.1.2023
So many thoughts came to me in conceiving and writing this story…
~ We can find purpose much closer to home than we think. If we’d only look up and see instead of being lost in our own battles…
~ Helping others who suffer can help us in ways we can’t imagine. Simple acts of kindness are often the cure for our own isolation and illness…
~ How easily we rush to offer foolish prescriptions to people without understanding the full context and constraints of their lives…
~ While I chose poverty as the suffering in this story, fact is suffering can be present in many forms - visible and invisible. A little attention can help us see…
Did it work? What did it make you think about?
I’m in new books!
I am now in two 2023 Anthologies…
My sci-fi story of interstellar romance "Interstellar Sympathies — Who needs those?!" is published in the Redwood Writers' (of the California Writers Club) 2023 Anthology of speculative fiction "One Universe to the Left"
Five poems by me are published in "The Circle - Poetry of Diaspora in Silicon Valley" a 2023 anthology of contemporary, original poems and poems in translation from Hindi, Sanskrit, Urdu, Marathi, Persian, and polyglot experiments in Japanese and Turkish.
Lovely...
I love this. It’s a comment on how helping others helps ourselves sometimes without anyone realizing.
I find this whenever I volunteer. It feeds my soul.