Pathos

I always tell myself not to tell me stories. Yeah, you read that right. I prohibit my mind to tell me stories. I find it it brings peace of mind. Lest the reader might think I actually have the discipline to not to tell myself stories allow me to disappoint you now. If I catch myself telling myself stories I stop but otherwise the mind is kinda pernicious and subtly subverts all my thoughts as I go along. One of those things the brain is good at, cooking up all kind of stories as the days transpires and runs like a program in the background sucking up CPU. There is, however, one thing I have no control over and it is recollecting past events. Some things just play in rewind mode and replay mode outta of the blue or so it seems eitherways. Sometimes it just requires an association or a trigger ever so slight to replay past events. Usually guilt ridden memories or emotions that haunt my flesh and spirit in the here and now and the future of whatever awaits. Sometimes they are pleasant if they are memories which have elapsed during the day and leave a trace of themselves to digest for days or years, decades or yeah, decades at most we hope. Such as today.

I am a teacher and today a student out of the blue wanted to show me drawings made by said student. It was fascinating because usually Swedish people are often rather reserved even at a real young age. I was very much taken aback at this powerful gesture. So much that I haven’t been able to let go of the moment and am afraid it will take sometime before it does. There are many interpretations to this gentle act by the student and many possible stories behind it. Out of this act several things are certain. 1. The student was showing pride and confidence about the work presented to an audience, that is, me, and courage in allowing other eyes to see the production at hand and exposing it to us humans and our cruel critiquing ways. 2. The student showed trust to a complete stranger, in this case me, the teacher, to judge the drawings before hand. Since I am no Swede and can only act in the only ways that I can: I have been moved to my inner core and since I have adopted the way of the Swedes I can no longer react in the old ways thus I am rather left at a loss. I am moved by this gentle act of kindness and at the same time know not what to do or how to react to it except reminisce and ponder about the act.