Writings on the Wall

One stroke to the left and it's all done. I could almost see their smirks as they rush off the street after finishing that last stroke on the wall. Kids! How carefree can they become especially in the middle of the night. I wonder if there has ever been a hint of nervousness everytime they trash someone's wall. Passing by the kids' "masterpiece", it suddenly struck a chord in me when I was still young. Vividly, I can recall how we molested our classroom blackboards with our versions of graffiti. But of course, it is no match at these kids works when all we have is the dusty manufactured lime and they got spray paint.

Unaware, someone suddenly stopped my tracks as a kid approached and extended a can of spray paint to me. Confused, I gazed at him and with questioning eyes, I reached for that can of spray paint, shook it and placed it on the ground. I could almost see his smile considering that he succeeded in persuading me to get the can from him.

He motioned me to take the can from the ground and spray it on the wall, and he said, "express what is in you, the wall will be your slave for the night, the wall will hear everything but will not fight back." True, indeed, the wall has always been at everyone's mercy. And, he continued, " the wall is hard, but will never be hard on you when you start pouring in everything that is inside you, that is the duty of the wall, to accept things as they are no matter how painful, how damaging it is for him. Remember, in all the walls in the world, nothing will ever bent over on you and slap you for damaging them. It is there, built to protect you and accept all the grievances you have to the world and to the men that lives on that world."

The kid continued with his monologue, "this wall will be seen by every passer by when the sun rises, but no one will ever realize what it had suffered in the past nights. This wall will never be glorified, not even by its masters who decided to build it, but its glory overshadows every one when night time came, when no one is asleep apart from those artists whose minds have been too Venetian yet too modern to use the wall as a canvass in their artworks. And, tomorrow, these kids will be in some dingy room, relishing every bit of their canvasses in their dreams while the morning men will spat or uriniate on it."

Feeling the kid's sense of weariness, I suddenly found myself saying, "I believe, men are just like walls - being used or the user, the canvass or the trash, a protector or a slave, can be glorified or can be sneered at, can be loved or can be hurt, can be built or can be struck. Just like the wall, men are bound to be slapped, to grieve or to be grieved or to be damaged." The kid, following what I said replied, "but unlike the wall, you have to remember that we just do not stand erect. Men are pliant. Men has the freedome to choose - either to accept pain or to be pliant and to resist pain. Unlike the wall, men has the mind to control, whilst the wall will always have the heart to accept but no mind to reason out. Now, you have the option to spray that can of paint just like the wall, or be a man and have the courage to run away from every dilemma that you face?"