The Women by the Desert Well – Trapped in the Present by her Past

 The Women by the Desert Well – Trapped in the Present by her Past- All that She Knows

 There once was a man who had been travelling alone for many years.  At long last, he found himself in the very heart vast desert.  He came over the last hill and there in front of him was a tired-looking woman sitting by a small well attempting to lower her bucket into the well to draw water. Each time she pulled the bucket up, it was empty. The place was barren, not a tree for shade, no grass to sit down on. The desert was all around her.   She was utterly alone.  He said to her, “you appear to be an intelligent woman, don’t you know that is a dry well?”  She said, “No, it is not, I just have to try harder and eventually I will get water. It is my fault that I am not drawing water.  I am not doing something right. I even may deserve it. It may be some sort of punishment and I must atone for it”.

 He asked the young woman, who by now looked much older than her age, “Have you ever got water from that well? She answered yes, many, many years ago, I can’t tell you exactly when.”   He said to her, “Kind lady, I believe that well has gone dry, and you will never get water from it again.  If you walk with me a short distance, I can take you to a deep and full well, and you can have a cool refreshing drink.  I just went past such a fine well not far from here.  It is just over that hill……. there”, as he pointed off in the distance. “Come with me,” he said, “otherwise you might die.” Again he said … “there is no water in that well.”

She turned away from him and put the bucket back down into the well as she had done for as long as she could remember. The stranger pleaded with her, “you must come with me; trust me, I know the way. If you stay here at that empty well, you will surely perish. The good well is not that far away.   When was the last time you have seen someone here at this well besides me?”  She answered in a voice you could barely hear as she had wasted away so much. “I haven’t seen anyone here for many, many years until you suddenly turned up out of nowhere. I don’t know you. How can I trust you if I leave this well?”  

He then commanded her to come with him or face death at that dry well. “You must save yourself, come with me.” For the last time, he said, “You are doing nothing wrong; it is simply a dry well.”

 But she didn’t believe him.  She turned to him and said, “No, I shall not leave this well, my well, the only one I have ever known.  I am going to stay here. I have to try one more time, and maybe just maybe I will do it right this time.”

 He eventually had to walk away, leaving her alone again. The last time he looked back at her, she looked worse than when he met her, sitting down in the hot sun, still trying desperately to draw water from the dry well. 

Later when he returned to his village, nobody knows who she was.  Nobody ever saw her again. She didn’t even know her own name when he asked her.  Someone in the village said, “I think her name was Echo.” “That seems a suitable name for her” the other said.

The stranger then said, “There are some people I’ve heard of who have spent 10,000 years alone in the desert, by their dry well. No wonder they suffer so. They simply refuse to go over the nearby small hill to where there is an eternal spring”.  

The Moral of the Story is either remain wretched and dispairing, stuck by the unresolved grief of all your life losses of your Past,  atoning, seeking forgiveness in all your shame, slowly dying each day by the desert well OR destroy/forget your entire past, be redeemed and delivered to your new future. Born for a second Time.

Written by Wallace Howe – Feb 30 2020