Why not stay a little longer?
(Baonghean)
(Baonghean)If only, before abandoning something dear to us, we would pause for a moment to question and answer the questions of our own lives?
In my alley, a child was given a star-shaped lantern by his parents, and every evening he would gather the other children around the neighborhood to parade it through the streets. I sat drinking tea with my neighbors and felt so envious. I wished I could be a child again, happily playing with lanterns like those kids, so innocent and joyful. Suddenly, the little boy with the lantern started sobbing. It turned out someone had bumped into his lantern, causing it to fall and break the handle, rendering it unusable.
Several adults, thinking something was wrong, ran out to see what was happening, but the boy cried even more. He clutched the lamp tightly with both hands, ignoring everyone's offers to let them see what was wrong, whether it could be repaired, and if not, they would buy him a new one. No matter how much they tried to comfort him, he wouldn't stop crying. He sat down on the sidewalk in front of a house, weeping and clinging to the lamp as if it were a precious treasure.
The boy only stopped crying when one of the kids ran home and brought back a bottle of glue, scissors, and a roll of wire, and then the two of them busied themselves fixing the lamp. The adults watched the two children meticulously cutting and pasting, chuckling and shaking their heads: "That's just how children are, they don't want the new but cling to the old and regret it!"
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| Illustration: Nam Phong |
The story of the lamp reminded me of a couple from the same neighborhood. They were young, married for only two years, and had a baby boy about six months old. The husband worked all day and didn't come home until late at night. The wife stayed home to take care of the baby, cook, and manage the household.
The couple would barely see each other, but as soon as the husband came home, a loud argument would erupt. They would hurl insults at each other, like, "If only I hadn't married you!", "Get out of here!", "I'm so fed up with your old face!"... Countless times, their voices mingled with the cries of their children, driving the whole neighborhood crazy.
And then they actually went to court, officially separating after an argument that stemmed from a very trivial reason. After the divorce, the wife took the children back to her hometown, while the husband came home late every night, drunk.
That's it, we adults have become impatient, hasty, and quick to make decisions to discard things easily. If only, before abandoning something dear, we would pause for a moment to reflect and answer the questions of our lives, something even an inanimate computer can do, as in a poem by Nguyen The Hoang Linh: “…once I wrote poetry on my computer/ and named the file “tinhyeu” (love)/ when I wasn't satisfied I intended to delete it/ the computer, considered eternally emotionless, asked me:/ “are you sure you want to delete “tinhyeu”?/ I shuddered/ my friend.”
Dang Tieu
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