one little book changed everything

Think of something that, when you were young, shaped your life in a significant way.

When I was a teen, my dad was head usher at our church. As such, he – and we, his family – arrived at church on Sunday well before just about anyone. I spent most of those Sunday morning half-hours in the small, dark-paneled church library. Often I’d flip through a concordance, going down a rabbit hole about whatever term caught my attention. (Bible concordance were huge books that, before the internet, offered alphabetical listings of words and phrases indicating where they occur throughout all the Biblical books.) I wasn’t a Bible nerd. I simply found this information cool in the same way I found the etymology in dictionary entries to be cool.

On days when I wasn’t looking at the concordance, I'd pull down and look at a book that caught my eye. Today’s post is about one such book. 

I was about fifteen when I found it, a small, adult picture book illustrated simply with line drawings. Details – both of the illustrations and the story itself – are lost to memory. They’ve been replaced with what I needed that book to contain. I read it only once perhaps forty-seven years ago...

A young woman, standing outdoors, began to build a wall around herself. One brick each day, sometimes two, she built it. And brick by brick, it grew. At first there were only two courses of bricks in a half circle in front of her, nearly within arms reach of her (and the reader) but slowly the wall grew as day by day she added more bricks – waist high, then higher still until eventually the wall was taller than she was.

It was quiet behind her wall. Peaceful. Safe. There was no pain or anger. No confusion. There was also no wonder or delight but this didn’t trouble her, shielded as she was from those other things. And for no one knows how long, not even the young woman herself, she remained there, content in her solitude.

But one day as she stood in front of her wall, soaking in all the ways that it protected her, she was surprised when a flower landed at her feet. It had dropped from above, from the other side of the wall she had built for her own protection and well-being. A token from someone she could not see and did not know. 

The young woman stood contemplating this gift from the unknown stranger. How long she stood there, I don’t know. Maybe days, months passed as she thought about the flower and what it meant.

And then one morning, the woman began – one brick at a time – to take down her wall. It had taken her many months, maybe years, to erect. It would take at least as long to dismantle.

Earlier, I invited you to think of something that shaped your life. This book is one for me.

I didn’t recognize that the story was a parable. I understood parables only as stories Jesus told to get his point across. That other people might employ the same device didn’t occur to me.

The concept of metaphor also eluded me – well into adulthood – but when I read this story I knew the author was writing about my life. Already, I had begun building a wall to protect myself from the confusions and hurts that were (I later realized) a regular part of growing up. I didn’t know how to cope with them or with the emotions which seemed to be triggered too easily. Describing my reaction to the story in today’s vernacular, I’d say – “OMG, that’s me!”

I’m a loner who craves the company of others – but not too much – and only of a select few.* Still, I need them as much as I need green trees and a piano. Yet connecting is hard. Before learning about my Asperger’s, I’d noticed that innocent remarks could leave people offended. I thought there was something wrong with me

This book presented itself at just the right moment. I’ve never seen another copy. If I had missed it, another learning opportunity might have presented itself. (They have a habit of doing that.) What I know is that my world changed that Sunday. Though it’s still difficult every time I speak to a new person, or ask something new of a familiar one, I risk it, opening myself to possibilities. Another person might look at my thin circle of friends and say that I’ve failed. But I know what my life might have been like if I’d never read that book.

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*  The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) identifies me as a gregarious introvert. I like 16 Personalities for learning more about each of the 32 types – the 16 original types each split into two subtypes. My daughter Kay who has delved deeply into the MBTI for character research in writing her novels tells me that this site’s assessment is the best (free one) she’s found.