Vachon Imagined

I walk into the room and can see the expression on his face. The bell had come to make its toll; the young man had to lie in his bed. There was a look of torture, of self-punishment. Life had turned hard, mostly against himself.

Sadness had become defiantly heavy—too heavy to pick up and cast aside—because he already knows punishment. He knows the disappointment of others.

Sensitive to feeling, as all kids begin, he laments over a misplaced frog toy. Easy enough, perhaps, but to him that misplaced frog toy carries the same pressure as some great moral failure. A small act and a life-altering act become weighted the same beneath the gaze of judgment. Both belong to the same life, yet to the person perceiving it, the mistake becomes identity. The person himself is judged—both the receiver of the judgment and the giver of it.

And so the mind says: I’m a bad person, and I deserve punishment. Judge and jury sweep easily into a mind conditioned by precedent, a mind that says: I made a mistake, and therefore I deserve punishment.

Another crucified soul. Another bell tolls.

Then an easy ear, a voice of reason, steps in and asks: Who carried this emotion?

A young man, now trained in this language, answers: I did.

I carried something that happened hours ago.

And that’s what we do. For years, for lifetimes, we carry perceptions of moments and build fixtures of punishment around them, until presence occurs and the walls can finally fall. Then gentleness, ease, and resurrection become possible.