The Boy, The Book, and The Bay

Don't ask me where I came from. I could tell you I was created many years ago by an old sorcerer in a dusty attic. I could say that some greater power, a magnificent entity bound my pages and sent me here for reasons that cannot be understood by men's simple minds. Or perhaps that I have just always been; no before. No, do not ask me where I came from. It is much simpler to accept that it does not matter my origins, only that I am here.

In any scenario where a question can be asked, I find it much more valuable to ask why. Why does a boy who has it all stray so far from the path of good? Why, when his track record shows only mistakes, would he choose to act in love? Why would he turn away the chance to do exactly what his heart is yearning to do? These questions, and the many more whys I'm sure you will develop, I choose to leave with you. But I will feed your appetite and tell you the why pertaining to me.

Why am I here? To reveal; to guide; to change.

The day I chose the boy was especially hot. The kind of heat that stinks up the air like salt and makes man's skin stick. The kind that draws humans to the water. He was no exception. The boy sat by the blue bay and watched the tide rise and fall, turning the hot sand cool and dark. He did not approach the water to partake in her cooling relief. He only sat and watched.

The boy was quickly approaching manhood yet had learned nothing of bravery, love, or liberty. He had a knack for getting himself into trouble. Not the kind of trouble boys typically find themselves in -scraped knees and broken dishes and picking on a girl at school- but fistfights and expulsions and run-ins with the law. Most recently, the boy had been put on probation for truancy. This was typical for him. Perhaps that is why he found himself by the bay on this sweltering day. Maybe it was an escape from the chaotic life he was used to.

The boy watched as a girl a few years younger than him sat in the sand, allowing the water to reach her toes down near the shore. The girl was small and frail. She looks like she's never seen the sun, the boy thought, which, although it was not a fair statement, it was not wholly inaccurate. One of the girl's legs was shriveled and deformed. She sat with her crutches and school bag behind her, safe from the water running up the shore, and enjoyed a rare day of bliss and sunshine.

The boy wished the girl had not come to the bay. He hoped that she would go back home and not disturb him. That she would disappear rather than disrupt his view of the water. It was while rotting in these nasty thoughts that the boy noticed me. Not even a foot away from his right hand, my black skin was a contrast to the white sand. Typically, the boy would have ignored something as inspiring as a book, but I have a talent for persuading the erratic heart.

The boy held me by my spine and flipped through my rough pages. He was as surprised as every human I have chosen before him to find he needed no pen to write his thoughts across my pages. Every review he had just had about the cripple girl was written in thick, black ink. Direct and easy to read. The poignant scent of his shame was thick in the air as he reviewed his wicked thoughts to his infinite chagrin. For even a boy like he could not deny the iniquity of his own ideas.

In hot, black ink, the words "I can't change" appeared below the aforesaid writings. I have found this thought is common among man, but always wholly false. In red ink, I write back, "These thoughts are truly a reflection of yourself. I hold a mirror to your heart, and you are discomforted by what you see. If every nasty thought that has entered your head were written here on my pages, then I'm afraid they would appear as dark as my cover. But hear this: though these words are who you are, they are far less than who you could be. I tell you this, not to comfort you -it is not my duty to comfort humans- but because it is the truth as I see it."

"You're wrong," the black ink spells, "I have done nothing but disappoint. I only know how to make bad choices. How can you say that I'll ever be more than that."

"I do not disagree that you make numerous poor choices," in red. "Your mistakes are as innumerable as the grains of sand around you. However, man is nothing if not full of potential. I say, your prospects are as many as there are drops in this bay."

The boy responded in silence. No thought of his was solid enough to appear on my paper. I continued, "Why do you chase after calamity? Why do you search for an answer before the question is fully formed? Success will become ever-elusive if you continue down the path you tread now. But I am here to offer you the chance to change your ways and redeem yourself. Tell me first if you even desire such an opportunity."

"I'm tired," the boy responds. "I'm tired of making the same mistakes over and over again. But that's just it. I'm built for bad. How can I stop doing wrong when it's all I've ever known?"

"A better question to ask is why," a firm belief of mine. "Why do you think you're stuck in this cycle?"

"I don't know," the boys answered, but we both know this is dishonest. "Maybe because it's all around me. The bad memories. The habits. The friends. It follows me everywhere I go. If I could just get away from it all -go someplace where nothing reminds me of my failures- maybe then I could do better."

"I agree that you need to get away from the people and the things that lead you to do bad. It would be best to start over. But I do not believe that running away will cure you. If your heart remains wicked, then leaving is futile. You will find new evils wherever you go. If you first make your heart pure and open to love, it will not matter where you are. You will find your way."

It's interesting how humans have a habit of disagreeing when the truth is presented to them. They will do what they can to avoid change, to do the bare minimum.

The boy responds, "I'll never change here. I'll never be capable of anything good as long as I'm in this town. I'll never amount to anything. If I leave, then maybe I have a chance. If I only had the money, then I could leave, and I could be better."

Now, I stand by what I said. It is much more valuable to use why than any other interrogative word. Yet every now and then, I am surprised to find that this is not wholly sufficient.

I ask the boy, "What are you searching for?" There is a long pause in which the boy contemplates this. Then, "Go to the shoreline," I tell him, "and walk east until you find an area of sand untouched by the water."

"Why," the boy asks, but I continue. Sometimes it is best to let others decide the answers to their questions themselves.

"Dig a hole into the ground until you find a small, brown box made of wood. Inside you will find what I need." The boy obeyed my command and found the little brown box. Inside was $20,000. I don't know why, but the boy flipped through my pages again.

"My final words:" I told him, "change starts with you. No matter where you go, goodness and love cannot devour you until you let it. You must let it consume you from the inside, set up camp in your soul, and start a fire in your heart. No place and no person can ever do that for you. The only thing that can make a change in your life is your desire to do so. So I leave you with a choice: take the money and run away if you truly think that it will change you or dig down deep inside yourself and find the urge to change here."

And with that, my pages returned to white, without the stain of the boy's thoughts. The boy left the money that day, and in secret, he slipped me into the bag of the cripple girl by the water. After that, I don't know what became of the boy. He never returned to the bay. What I do know is that in the moments between leaving the money and placing a little black book in a stranger's school bag, the boy's heart was changed, if only for a few seconds.