Once there was a boy. A boy who stayed still. His family would travel on vacations all over the world. To Bangkok. To Belgium. Even to Baghdad. However, when his family went away he would stay behind, in his room, and stare at the white wall. From his old bed frame, his old mattress, and his old comforter he could examine the cracks in the wall. The paint chipped away. The wooden floorboards. And every time his family went away on vacation, usually for weeks at a time, he would stare — with a long — yearning to know what that wall really was. He grew so intimate with the wall that he knew every scrape, every mark, every part that composed it.
His family was off in Bosnia wavering, vacillating, see-sawing excruciatingly between the succulent menu options at a local restaurant. You see..This boy’s family was all about trying new things. They had been all over the world, eaten all different kinds of food, seen amazing things, and had amazing adventures and experiences. However, they didn’t really know anything fully. They didn’t know anything like the boy knew the wall.
The boy kept learning about his wall and his family zig zagged around the world, never doing the same thing twice, always tasting something novel.
When the boy was older he listened to his family one Christmas sharing about all their different trips. They went on for hours with endless description and detail. Finally, there was a long silence. The boy spoke up and said:
I’ve named my wall. Jerry. Jerry the Wall.
His family stopped eating. His little sister with a half-eaten meatball in her mouth let it drop back onto her plate. Then aliens attacked. Since aliens attacked we’ll never know what would have happened next.
But the moral of the story is: Life isn’t always about having to try everything. We don’t have time for it all. Sometimes it’s good to go deep with something and really study it and spend time with it…Like a wall. Jerry the Wall.
The family had plans to paint Jerry blue but…as you know…aliens attacked.
