The Wall

The wall was a beautiful wall. It had paintings and decorations that were not only pleasing to the eye, but they had the ability to take your breath away. Everyone loved this wall. People would walk by and compliment on how beautiful the wall was. It was perfect…or at least as perfect as a wall could be. The wall stood there for many years, and it never occurred to anyone to look behind the wall. Who would want to risk seeing what was behind this wall anyways. It was simply too beautiful of a wall. Don’t mess with perfection…and that is how everyone viewed it. But the wall was flawed. It was deeply flawed, and only its guardian could see the flaw. Everyone walked by day after day and talked about how amazing that wall was…never noticing the flaw that the guardian could see. They never noticed how afraid the guardian was of the wall either…for the guardian knew what was behind this wall. But as time passed the flaw grew. The wall began to slowly show its flaw…a long deep crack. But the wall was still beautiful to its observers…I mean after all…isn’t it the flaws that make great artwork great…right? More time passed and the wall began to crumble. You see there was something behind this wall. There were in fact many things behind this wall. The wall was actually built so that a passerby couldn’t see the contents of the wall. The guardian began to feel panic as the wall began to crumble. The guardian new the contents of the wall, and new that if the wall was destroyed then everyone would see the secrets behind it…and there was nothing beautiful about these secrets. These secrets where ugly…and the guardian knew that once the wall came down and the ugliness was revealed people would stop coming by to visit this beautiful place. But time passed and the wall came down. The guardian was horrified. Standing in the ruins of that wall and its contents the guardian began to weep. And no one came. Not for a while. The ugliness was scattered everywhere, and the wall was in ruins. What was the guardian to do? The guardian wept for days and prayed and cried out…knowing that now that the wall was destroyed no one would ever come near again. But something strange happened. People came by. The people were shocked at the absence of the beautiful wall. Some shed tears when they realized what the wall had been guarding. Some simply could not take the ugliness that was now scattered for public viewing, and left quickly. Some tried to reconstruct the wall, but their efforts failed. And some tried to comfort the guardian…but they really didn’t know how to help. But something even stranger happened. New people came. These new people came and they looked at the ugliness and told the guardian it wasn’t that ugly. They told the guardian it would be okay, and it was time to stop weeping and start sorting through the rubble the wall had left. And so these new people began to help the guardian. And as the guardian allowed these new people to help with the ugliness, they began to show that the ugliness wasn’t that ugly. And then an even stranger thing happened the ugliness began to look beautiful to the guardian. And the new people smiled because they had known all along that the ugliness wasn’t really ugliness, in fact these people had not thought that beautiful wall, so beautiful to begin with. The guardian is still afraid of life without the wall…but the guardian is beginning to see beauty in what was once viewed as ugly.