The Empty Yard

With the commandment to “Go play together,” the young boy and girl skip into the yard, an empty field of bare grass. A blank canvas for their fertile imaginations.

“Let’s play Tag!”

“Ok!”

One reaches out and pokes the other, then runs away squealing. The other chases. After a few minutes, two mothers glance out the window and smile. All is good until The Incident. The current “It” reaches out and brushes a sleeve – light contact, at best.

“Hey, you’re It now!”

“Am not! You didn’t touch!”

“Did too – I touched your sleeve!”

“That don’t count. Besides, I was Home.”

“Was not – Home is over there.”

“Is not cheater!”

“You’re the cheater!”

A flying blast of sod escalates the confrontation. Soon a scream and crying pierce the air as perplexed mothers rush out. An empty yard, filled with imaginary rules resulting in hurt feelings and physical violence. What went wrong?

And so goes human nature. What an incredible power we posses, to create something out of nothing. We can create worlds from blank paper. Music from silence. Rules from anarchy. Boundaries from empty space.

We need rules, of course. Our systems organize us, give us structure in which to advance and grow. So we create imaginary boundaries and laws, then imbue them with the power of our belief.

And there’s the key: communal belief. We cannot paint a boundary in an empty yard unless we all believe it exists. Our communal belief creates the structure and order we desire. In fact, it is the only thing that creates this structure. Without communal belief, it doesn’t exist.

Of course, the truth is, it doesn’t exist even then.

It is not the incontrovertible fact of a rule’s existence which we recognize and honor. It is our combined belief in this rule. And does this belief help us? Without communal belief, we have no rules for the games we play. No laws to order our society.

No religion to bring us salvation.

No boundaries to fight over.

No “other side” to kill or die fighting.

But in the end, they still don’t really exist do they? And if a rule that doesn’t actually exist is causing hardship, then doesn’t it benefit us to question it, challenge it, dissolve it back to the nothingness from which it came?

Who threw that clod of dirt on the playground? Who knows. Rewind. Was Home over here or over there? Rewind. Did the sleeve count? Rewind. Let’s play Tag. Rewind. Moments of unbridled joy. Rewind. Children running into the yard. Rewind.

The yard is empty. No rules. No joy. No suffering. It is empty.

And so it was. And so it will always be.