The Jar

When you’re young, you hear many stories and you are gifted quotes and maxims aplenty. Few of them stick, and even those that do stick, only hold on by the skin of their teeth or by their cracked and raggedy fingernails. If you’re lucky, you’ll remember them when it counts, but mostly they’ll come to haunt you with their meaning after the fact, and you’ll wonder just how much you have forgotten and how different things might have been…

If only you’d known.

My Uncle Freddie told me a story once. Now I think on it, he probably told me the same story a whole bunch of times. There are people who do that. They have a repertoire of stories and some will apologise for the telling of the same story for a second time. If you are a good and kind person, you will say nothing other than to encourage them to tell the story you already know so well, having heard it a hundred times before. Why? Because stories have a habit of moving on. Stories are just as alive as you and I, only more so, because they thrive on the meaning we give to them. And every time a story visits us, we give it something a little different. Just the same as we never give the same gift twice.

Uncle Freddie’s story was about a jar. At least that was what I took away from it. The story was silly and frivolous and I always took it on face value. It was a tale of animals doing what animals do, which was to be dumber than us humans. Back then, I missed the point of a lot of things. I didn’t think that animals had much to teach a person. I mean, you don’t see a mouse at the front of a class teaching the kids maths, do you?

So all I took from that yarn of Uncle Freddie’s was entertainment. I wish I’d attended to it a little more and equipped myself with the wisdom that it offered. My head is a little older now though. I was young back then, but even if my old self went to visit that young man, I’d treat him the same way as the stories and all the other wise words I was gently assailed with. Wisdom is the water that runs off a duck’s back. Plenty of it surrounds the duck as it is, why would it need anymore?

We are born into a complete world that just is. After that, when we join a new group, we apply the same frame of mind. Everything we see in our first moments has been there forever. Who are we to know any different? I saw this at play a few times and it tickled me. There was a guy joined our work detail just two weeks after me. Took me a while to realise that he thought I was time served and part of the furniture of the place. Even when I reminded him I was a newby and I’d only started a fortnight before him, he couldn’t shake the habit of his seeing me as well established and a font of all knowledge. After a few attempts to dissuade him of this, I guess I went with it. The line of least resistance is a sultry temptress, she promises much but gives you the hardest of times if you’ll let her.

Life in Carfax was tough. Then it got tougher. We all noticed the tougher bit. No one likes change, even if it’s beneficial. Most change can be beneficial, if you give it a chance. Finding out how to give it a chance is the tricky part. Seems too tricky for most.

The reason things got tougher was the waning light. Light in Carfax was always at a premium. But when I was born into that part of the world, you could set your watch by it. Then things changed and the light got slacker and slacker with its time keeping. 

At first the differences were small, but always noticeable. We lived in hope that the loss of light was temporary, but we knew that could not be the case. How could it? Our days had been the same for as long as any of us could remember, and there was no record of deviations in the period of light afforded us each day. 

A standard day in Carfax consisted of six hours of daylight. Three hours from nine in the morning until noon and three more hours from two in the afternoon. We joked about lunching in the dark, but it was no joke really, it just was. Unless you were a part of the elite that was. Those who lunched in the light were privileged. For the rest of us, daylight was to be used and used wisely. There was a monetary value to those six hours. That was when most of the work took place.

The darkness in Carfax was nigh on absolute. Only essential lights punctuated the dark and these were kept to a minimum. So when daylight ended, everyone needed to be back home and indoors, cooking and reading by candlelight.

The timings around daylight were cut as fine as fine could be, so when the daylight ended just a few minutes earlier than expected, there was pandemonium, panic and chaos. People died on the first day that daylight ended early, and more died each and every time the light didn’t stick around like it always had.

Worse still, there was a growing unease at what everyone thought was happening to them personally. The very bedrock of society had cracked and now it was slipping from under our feet. Violence broke out as the anger of chaos filled the populous. The ties that bound became strained and then they started snapping. Neighbour turned on neighbour. Families squabbled, bickered and this escalated until the threat of an all-out war became very real.

A war on what though?

That thought troubled me, as did a number of other thoughts and worries. It seemed to me that we were fighting each other because we couldn’t see what was really at play here. We had no one else to blame, and so we blamed each other. We had to do something and in the midst of our anger we ceased to think and we only acted.

It was around this time that I began to remember more of Uncle Freddie’s story. The story of the jar. Only the jar wasn’t the only part of the story. The important part of the story was, as you would expect, what was in the jar.

The jar was filled with two types of ant, and all was well in that jar. The ants were ants and they were busy being ants. Life as far as all the ants were concerned, was good. You can’t get better than that, however hard you try. Try too hard and you’ll break it. There is an equilibrium that needs to be maintained. Some would call it inertia, but that’s perspective for you.

Then one day, the jar got shaken. As the jar shook, the lives of the ants was disrupted and the ants didn’t like it. They didn’t like it at all. There was fighting. Now in the story, the ants fought the other, type of ant. They found something different, labelled it other, and they put the blame on the other so they could attack it and in doing that, somehow feel better about the situation and themselves.

I think in practice, there would be just as much fighting between the very same types of ants. Lots of that fighting would be hidden behind closed doors, but you’d see the after effects if you chose to look up and see the bruises, downcast eyes and cowed postures. That is the way of the world and there’s no changing it, unless you see it for what it is.

The jar shook again.

There was more fighting.

This part of the story was simple and made sense to me from the off. The more the jar shook, the more the ants fought. 

But then came the coup de gras. Uncle Freddie grinned and added to the story with one simple fact and in that moment, everything changed.

You see, there was a hand shaking the jar. 

There was a reason for the shaking. There was a will being applied to the jar and that will caused the conflict inside the jar. If only the ants had ceased fighting each other, looked out from the jar and seen that hand, they’d know who was to blame.

Now I remembered the story, I had an even more important question forming in my mind.

Why?

Why did the hand shake the jar?

I wanted to know that, but I knew I was already applying this to my own situation and the matter of the failing light.

Why was this happening?

Now, you might think me stupid, and I guess we are all stupid to some extent or another. I know the five year old version of me was far more stupid than the twenty five year old version of me, but if my twenty five year old self was to confront my five year old self, call him stupid and glory in how much better he was than that sweet child? Well, that’s about as stupid as stupid gets. 

I may still have had much to learn, but what I did know was that asking my question freely in an environment of fear and violence was very likely going to get me hurt and maybe even killed. A man needs to know when to keep his mouth shut, and even when he does, he still speaks too much.

So, I kept this question to myself, and I mulled it over as events unfolded and the light became less and less reliable, so much so that our crops began to fail. I asked myself the unaskable question, and as I did, I wondered why I seemed to be the only one who wanted that answer. Why we’d made a world that prohibited a search for truth. Made dangerous any attempt to make everyone’s lives better.

Would the ants thank one of their number for pointing out the hand that grasped the jar? Or would they kill that ant and return to the shadow of their collective ignorance? Preferring to kill each other than face the reality of their existence.

I didn’t know the answers to any of my questions as the world around me plunged into layer after layer of anarchy. I felt utterly alone. I also felt helpless and in that helplessness was hopelessness also. There had to be something I could do. Something we could all do, but there was so much noise and distraction I began to doubt that any of us would survive this.

The loss and the waning of the light was a continued degradation. There was a pattern, and the pattern put simply was that it was getting worse. It were as though the light had gotten old and was no longer reliable. The consequence of old age loomed and the eventuality of the death of the light could only lead to the demise of everyone who dwelt under it. 

Only now did we fully appreciate that, despite three quarters of our day being in complete darkness, we were creatures of light. We flourished and were at our best when we were in the light, responding to the light. Being a part of the light as a collective.

When half of the six hours was lost to us, people started taking their lives. Worse still, there were rumours of sacrifices. Cults forming around the last of the pools of light. Cults of darkness twisting notions of light for evil purpose. 

With the shortage of light came related shortages. Food was chief amongst them. There was an expectation of an escalation of violence. Looming riots and carnage. But something strange happened as the light gave out, and with it the prospect of a return to the happy and prosperous times the light had provided for everyone. Once the flame of hope guttered and choked, the population fell into abject apathy. Now it was clear that death was approaching, a stillness fell upon the land and everyone quietly awaited the finality of their fate.

In that silence, there was no room for me to ask my question, and so I took to wandering in what little light remained. I was searching for an answer in this faltering world of ours. I was the only one who didn’t want to accept my fate. I suppose I’d found a different way to fight the certainty of my death.

I didn’t have a plan. Not one that I dared to articulate anyway. My wanderings were anxious and I was fearful every step of the way. No one in Carfax left the confines of the village. No one ventured forth. 

We were told from an early age that there was nothing out there for us. But there were also stories, myths and legends of what lay in wait beyond that which we could see. Besides, to be a Carfaxer was to be content with our lot. We had everything we could ever need, or at least we had had before the light began to desert us. 

Again, I was alone. My steps tentative at first, barely daring to look up in the direction I was travelling. As the days went by, the evidence of my footsteps emboldened me and I began to realise that sometimes you don’t need a fence or a wall to bar your way, or more to the point, that some boundaries are not visible. Those invisible restrictions are sometimes far more powerful than that which you can see. For anyone with adventure in their heart, a physical obstacle is a welcome challenge. A mental obstacle can crush the spirit of adventure, that in itself is death.

After a time, I walked further than I could see, experiencing elation as a result of daring to do something that, although not exactly forbidden, had been removed from me all the same. I was an explorer, and there was something exciting about my illicit activities. I wanted to share my adventures, but every time I returned home, there was little that resembled a welcome and soon enough, few who resembled the people I thought I once knew. All of them seemed lost. Lost in their own troubles. Troubles that seemed increasingly petty to me. 

It was as I returned to this state of group introversion and depression that I understood that there was more than this not only for me, but for everyone here. That there was a world beyond Carfax. That was when the hope within me bloomed. That was when I realised what it was that I had been wandering towards.

And so I went again and I went harder, and I looked up. I strode forth and I felt my heart swell and a power flow through me. I was grinning for quite some while before I even registered that I was happy. Happy in my endeavours. At last I was doing something and I was going somewhere. The nature of my destination was unknown to me, but I knew there was a place out there that was worth finding. Somewhere better than Carfax. A place better for my Carfaxers. The real people that lay under that self-concocted gravy of gloom.

In the distance there was a hill. I saw it and I just had to walk up it. The climb was unusual in these flat lands, and I was gasping even before I was halfway up. But when I reached the summit, I threw my head back and laughed with the exhilaration of it all. Then I cried. I cried tears of joy and then tears of sorrow. As my sobs subsided I lowered my head and that was when I saw it.

Then I ran.

I ran towards what I’d seen.

I ran towards something that I’d never before seen.

But I knew.

I knew and in that knowing, I knew that what I saw was broken.

Never have I seen something broken and rejoiced. Never has something wrong been so welcome. There was a split, or a crack. What I saw had broken open.

I couldn’t help thinking of an egg as I ran as fast as my legs could carry me. An egg cracking open to reveal new life.

That crack was further away than I had expected. I was gasping and suffering cramps as I reached a split in the reality that had held me in its hand for the entirety of my lifetime.

I stood just short of the gap before me and I almost gave up there and then. I almost stopped and then turned around. There was an unseen obstacle before me and I felt its power over me. It almost won the day, even as light spilled through that gap. Light that invited me to come and see more. To see where it was coming from and what it was illuminating.

Only as I forced myself forth and stepped through that gap and discovered the world outside Carfax did I remember Uncle Freddie’s other story. The one about the fleas in the jar. 

Once, the jar had its lid on, and the fleas learnt that it hurt and was also futile to jump so high as to hit the lid. They learnt there was no point to jumping too high. So they only ever jumped short of the lid. Then the lid was removed, and not one flea ever jumped out of that jar. Not even generations later. They’d made a prison. But the prison was really in their minds…