The Seeker And The True Existence
Today I want to share the wonderful story “The Seeker”, written by Jorge Bucay, in which he invites us to reflect on how to live a fulfilling life.
This is the story of a person we might call a seeker. Keep in mind that a seeker is someone who is on a quest with the intention of discovering “something”. It doesn’t necessarily have to be about someone “finding” something .
It is also not about a person who knows or is aware of what he is looking for. We are just talking about those people whose life is a wonderful quest.
The story begins on an ordinary day when the seeker feels that he must go to the city of Kammir. He had learned not to ignore these feelings, which came from an unknown place within him. So he left everything behind and left.
After walking the dusty trails for two days, he could see Kammir in the distance. Just before he reached the town , his attention was drawn to a hill to the right of the trail. The hill was covered with beautiful plants and many trees, birds and beautiful flowers.
The hill was completely surrounded by a small, polished wooden fence. A bronze gate lured him in. Suddenly he forgot the city and gave in to the temptation to rest for a while in this beautiful place.
The seeker stepped over the threshold and began to walk slowly around the white stones scattered haphazardly among the trees. It let his eyes wander, as the eyes of a true seeker do. Perhaps that’s why he discovered the inscription on one of the stones: “Abedul Tare lived eight years, six months, two weeks and three days.”
He was a bit overwhelmed when he discovered that the stone was not just a stone. It was a tombstone. His heart ached at the thought of such a young child being buried here.
When he looked around, he saw that the stone next to it also had an inscription. He came closer to read it, and it said, “Llamar Kalib lived five years, eight months, and three weeks.”
The seeker felt shocked. This beautiful place was a cemetery and every stone was a tombstone. They all had similar inscriptions: a name and the exact lifespan of the one buried there. But what filled him with terror was the realization that whoever had lived the longest had only turned eleven years old. Overwhelmed by a deep sadness, he sat down and began to cry.
The warden of the cemetery passed by and approached the man. He watched in silence for a while as he cried and then asked if he was sad because of the death of a family member.
“Not a relative,” said the seeker. “What’s wrong with this city? What is it that is so disastrous here? Why are there so many dead children? What is the terrible curse that rests on these people, so that they have to make a graveyard full of children?”
The old man smiled and replied:
“ Calm down, there is no curse. We have an old custom here. I’ll tell you. When a child turns fifteen, his parents give him a notebook, like the one I have around my neck. It’s a tradition of ours that from then on, whenever we’ve really liked something, we open the notebook and write what we enjoyed on the left and how long it took on the right.
Have you met your girlfriend and fallen in love with her? How long did this great passion and pleasure of knowing her last? And the excitement of the first kiss, how long did it last? Pregnancy and the birth of your first child? A trip you’ve been looking forward to for so long? The reunion with a brother who has been away to a faraway land? How long did the pleasure of these situations last? Hours? To dawn?
So we write everything in our notebook. When someone dies, it is our custom to open the notebook and add up all the pleasant moments and record that time on the grave. Because that, for us, is the time they really lived.”
