Gods and midgets – 200 words project

Here is this week’s 200 words project:

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“The people there were gods and midgets and knew themselves mortal and so the midgets walked tall so as to not embarrass the gods and the gods crouched so as to make the small ones feel at home. ”

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– Ray Bradbury says in Zen in the Art of Writing: Essays on Creativity

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What a beautiful thought. Can you imagine such a world, when no one calls on another person for their supposed limits, a place where everyone puts themselves in another person’s shoes and tries to see from the other’s point of view? A world where each one is sensitive to the other and so tries to adjust himself or herself in order to make the others comfortable. Would you like to live in such a world? Does such a world seem like the Utopia everyone seeks?

In this world where gods crouch and midgets walk tall, what happens when a god for some reason decided to be herself and forgets to crouch? Or when a midget gets tired of walking tall and decides to just be? In such a case, will this town of people look upon such a god and such a midget with horror? Will this god and this midget be ostracized for not toeing the line, for not fitting in? What if in the process of contemplating the wonders of the world, a few Gods and midgets decide that crouching and walking tall is not important and decide to forego this? Will this group, a minority then have to fight for the right, the privilege of just being? Will they be looked down upon and considered as outcasts from the society?

I see why Ray talks about all the sadness and happiness in such places – for it seems to me, however ideal a situation is, it always has an aspect of sadness to it.

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About the 200 Words Project

Once every week, on Monday morning, I will post my ‘200 Words Project’ post where I will ruminate on some idea which caught my interest in the current book I’m reading, or maybe (sometimes) from a blog post or podcast – in 200 words or more, never less!