The Echo in the Cave
Kaelen was a man whose soul was a storm cloud. Frustration was his constant companion, and anger flowed from him as easily as breath. After a day where everything had gone wrong—his cart had lost a wheel, the market had run out of the wood he needed, and the rain had soaked him to the bone—he stumbled upon the mouth of a great, yawning cave.
It seemed to him a perfect reflection of the emptiness he felt inside. A deep, dark well of silence. The rage that had been simmering all day finally boiled over. He strode into the cave's entrance, filled his lungs, and screamed.
"You worthless, wretched day!"
The cave did not absorb his words. It threw them back at him, magnified and multiplied. "WORTHLESS, WRETCHED DAY!" the echo roared, a chorus of a hundred angry Kaelens. The sound was so fierce and sudden that it startled him. It was his own fury, given form and thrown back in his face.
He felt a strange need to challenge it, to justify his rage. "The world is against me!" he shouted.
"WORLD IS AGAINST ME!" the cave thundered back, the words overlapping, sounding more desperate and pathetic than powerful.
A sliver of shame pierced his anger. This was what he sounded like. This was the energy he was pouring into the world. It was ugly. He sank to his knees, the fight gone out of him. In a moment of quiet despair, he whispered the words he hadn't realized he needed to say. "I am so tired."
The cave, faithful in its reflection, whispered back, "...so tired..." It was not mocking him now. It was simply acknowledging his truth.
A memory, fragile as a moth's wing, fluttered in his mind. His grandmother, years ago, telling him, "The world is a cave, my boy. It only gives back what you send out." He had never understood it until this very moment.
He took a deep, cleansing breath, pushing the last of the storm from his lungs. He thought of his small, warm cottage. He thought of the sun breaking through the clouds. He looked into the darkness and, with a voice he barely recognized as his own, soft and clear, he said, "Hello."
"Hello..." the cave answered, its voice now a gentle, welcoming sigh.
Encouraged, he spoke the words his own heart needed to hear. "You are not alone."
"...not alone..." the echo replied, a comforting promise.
Finally, he filled his heart with all the gratitude he could muster, for his health, for the shelter of the cave, for this profound lesson. "I love this life."
The cave did not hesitate. It gathered the warmth of his sentiment and poured it back over him, a wave of serene affirmation. "LOVE THIS LIFE..."
Kaelen walked out of the cave a different man. The rain had stopped, and a single star pierced the twilight. The world had not changed. The wheel of his cart was still broken. The market was still closed. But he was different. He now carried a fundamental truth within him: the world does not dictate your energy; it echoes it. And from that day forward, he was careful to only send out what he wished to hear in
Life is a great echo.What you shout into the void, you will hear returned to you. Choose your words and your energy wisely. #EchoInTheCave
#LifeIsAnEcho#WhatYouGiveIsWhatYouGet#Energy#usmanshaikh
#Karma#Mindfulness#usmanwrites#usm
