Allegories:Allegory of the Bucket
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Allegories:Allegory of the Bucket
Imagine for a moment a warm field on a clear summer’s day. Imagine yourself a child, sitting in that field. Imagine yourself surrounded by birds, bunnies, bees, flowers, and all the nice things of nature. You are warm, content, and cradled by the beauty that thrives all around you. Now imagine you see a figure approaching you, but still a ways off. Curious, you turn and watch as the figure comes closer and closer. Initially, you can’t make out any features, but as the figure approaches, you notice it is smiling and carrying a bright yellow bucket with a bright smiley face painted on the side.
The figure is smiling, the bucket is smiling, and it is such a warm, beautiful day that you don’t sense any danger at all. With a smile on your face, you watch the figure approach. As the figure draws near, it begins to raise the bucket. Before you can wonder what this might mean, the figure breezes past you and dumps a brown, sloppy mess right on top of your head. You immediately smell the stink but are deeply disoriented and confused. Your brain cannot process the contradiction. Somebody has dumped a warm bucket of fecal slop on your head, but you’re having a hard time believing that to be true. Spitting and sputtering, you scrape the slop from your eyes and shake the crap from your hands. Disgusted, you look up…and that’s when your confusion turns to horror. You hadn’t noticed before, but just a little way behind the first smiling figure is another smiling figure with another smiley-face bucket. Before you can gather yourself together, the contents of that bucket are dumped squarely on your head as well. Once again, you attempt to scrape yourself clean. You stand up in defence, but as you do another, and another, and another are dumped square on your head. You try to run, but between buckets there’s no time. You get angry. You lash out. You punch, kick, scream, and beg God above to stop, but nothing you do stems the flow.
This goes on for a while until eventually you just give up. At a certain point, it is just easier to find a way to accept. You look around and see others in the field getting dumped on just like you. You tell yourself it has always been this way, that it is “normal,” that it is a “test” and that it makes you stronger in the end.
You manage to survive of course, but you are traumatized, sick, and depressed, and there’s no more warm joy in your life. Over time, you diminish and then die, dysfunctional, disabled, and diseased by a lifetime of toxic slop.