Δευτέρα 13 Ιουλίου 2015

The Waiting Room …

The wet morning found me in the city park. My daily stroll in it gives breaths of life, the lungs are filled with the fresh air that is filtered in the blessed gardens, and my resilience for the everyday routine is reinforced.
On this particular occasion, during my exit from the park, I stood next to a building that I had not noticed before. It had an elliptical shape and after a quick calculation I came to the conclusion that it had the same dimensions with the earth but to a smaller scale. I remained, feeling awkward for a moment but I stepped towards it.
Upon reaching it, on the entrance wall I read: “Waiting Room”. Nothing else. I approached even more. The doric sign intrigued me. I went up the threshold and opened the door. I moved on a little hesitantly until I heard a thud behind me, the door closed and … it disappeared!
For a moment I was panicked. However, I could make out -in the dim light -a lot of people sitting around. Of every age and sex, of all races, as long as I could see white and coloured ones. My gaze slowly fell on everyone’s face. They were numerous, though. So I stopped.
“Where am I and what are you doing here?”, I asked the bystanders.
“You are in the Room of Hope and we are being patient. If you manage to come here you are trapped and you can never get out, or you get out with a lot of difficulty”, an old man replied.
What is Hope?
Hope is the distance between desire and its fulfilment. Obviously, it comes from thought. Its essence is always found in the past, but its greed wants to rule even the future. As it is known, thought is of one dimension. And it moves simultaneously with time. Its main characteristic is that it is never contented with what it possesses. And because it cannot achieve it, it fantasises, anticipates, expects, that is, it hopes. And, of course, the present is always absent. Consequently, Hope is the projection of the past onto the future.
The people in the Room of Hope spoke their minds:
“I am the second richest man in the world but I want to be the first.”
“I want to gain power, to rule all the others and their fortunes.”
“I am sitting here and I hope I’ll go to Paradise when I die. I’m scared of this life here, it’s scary in the way we created it.”
“I want my political party to be in office so that I can keep my job. I’m frightened of leaving it. I’ll be at a loss if I abandon its embrace. For I hope the politicians will offer me the worldly paradise.”
“I believe in my religion and wait until the word of my God is revealed, at the same time doing the contrary from what I was taught. Shall I wait long?”
“I have been waiting for the woman I ‘m craving for. I got old waiting for her and she has got old herself. I hope in the next life that we ‘ll be younger, things will go better.”
 “I am not someone important and I want to become important so that the gullible people will admire me.”
 “I believe in a world of justice but I refuse to part with the injustice I have inside me.”
“I am wicked and I hope I’ll be good hearted in the future, but what prevents me from doing so now, I don’t know.”
The people in the round room went on expressing their wishes, their desires. They lived and breathed for them. They had completely forgotten the real world they lived in; it didn’t exist for them, they weren’t interested in it. Their whole energy was to be channelled into the future. Future resembles the most cunning enemy who tries to find the suitable time to grab everything away from you. And you - terrified - are sitting helpless before it.
Thought is our dictator. It keeps us imprisoned. It prevents us from getting up, from breaking its sneaky bonds. And it manages fine. When you are greedy and you want to rule the future, the trap of Hope is set up automatically. As soon as you fulfil one of your desires, Hope traps you into waiting for the next one, and then the following, and in this way you are always waiting …
The Present is action. It’s pure energy when there are good intentions. The thought is cunning and always - through machination - serves its interests. And the personal interest is ill fate for everyone but the person.  Maybe for me too, but this will not be the topic of this discussion.
The old man was the last to speak: “A lot of things I expected to happen never happened. Others I didn’t expect to happen did happen. Time is a bizarre notion, sometimes it passes slowly, other times it passes quickly and in all this there is constant waiting.”
“What do you hope for, Sir?”
“I hope for a painless death. Now that I come to think about it, Hope is slow death and that’s why it always dies last.“
“And why shouldn’t it die first?”, I asked him with the naiveté that characterises me.
“Because if it dies first, it will give you your freedom, and you cannot stand it. ”
Inside the room, a child was playing carelessly with his toys. His whole energy was in the present and ignored the hopes and the desires of the rest. Was the room invisible for him?
What do you think?



The Residents of the World …
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Note: The translation of the Greek text into the English language was provided by Ky Al.