THE LENS

Chapter 1 - The Unhappy Man

Once upon a time there lived an unhappy man. He was completely oblivious of
this fact of course. When people asked him, he described himself as ‘driven’ and
‘easy going’, as blind as Barney to the implicit contradictions within. Reaching the
end of one very long journey and the beginning of another, he took a deep
breath, looked down and rubbed the lamp he held in his hand.

Dramatically, a puff of white smoke appeared and swirled around him, finally
dissipating to reveal a genie! Finally after all these years, success!

The man was an adventurer, a real life Indiana Jones. Across and under each of
the seven seas, he had been obsessively hunting down and rubbing lamps for
the past three years in a thus far futile attempt to find a magic one.

His extended absences during what became known at the car yard as “lamp
weeks” were the reason for both his loss of that job and his national ban from all
Spotlight stores, after realising far too late that genies only lived in oil lamps.

Success had come at a high price. Lost jobs, partners, an entire inheritance
frittered away. He slumped to the ground, swamped by the emotion of the
moment. The realisation that at long, long last, he’d been proven right. It had all
been worth it. As an excitable nobleman might exclaim in a moment of pique, it
was all a tad overwhelming.

Interrupting his surplus of whelm, the genie spoke.

“Greetings master. I am the genie of the lamp!”, he announced boldly.

Still scarcely believing what he was seeing, the man immediately recognised a
moment in dire need of several diems of the carpe variety. You didn’t win the
sales comp three years straight without THAT. Channelling his capitalist spirit
animal, a curled-up tiger ready to pounce, he snapped into business mode.

“Genie! I get three wishes right?!?”

The genie was taken aback at the man’s forthright and externally-confident
manner. People normally screamed instead of slumped, some prayed and others
tried to shoot him. Americans often did all three.

Thousands of years of these sorts of encounters did leave a genie welcoming a

challenge however. He gave a mischievous smile and responded.
“Though it MAY have been courteous Master if you’d allowed me to say so in due
course, you are correct in sense but not degree.
“I’m sorry?”, replied the man.
“Oh you’re forgiven!” chuckled the genie loudly, folksily whacking the man on the
back ever slightly harder than required.
“You do get wishes. But only two.”
“Two?!”
“Inflation I’m afraid. Technically you’re getting the same AMOUNT of wish as
Aladdin did back in BC, but unfortunately wish price increases have exceeded
rises in income, yada yada yada, make a wish foundation hyperinflation, real
wish purchasing power parity. Long story short. It comes to 2.3 wishes. And you
know, wishes are discrete, you can’t really have thirty percent of one.”

He looked up and to the left and rambled on. “Well you can, but thirty percent of
a fulfilled wish is either a frustrating or ominous thing.

Scrambling to keep up but wanting to remain on the front foot, the man snapped
back “Oh so you just keep that 30%? How is that fair?”
No-one, mortal or eternal put one over him. He prided himself on it.

“You’re of course absolutely right master. So to make it fair, although I can’t give
you 30% of a wish, I can offer you 30% off AT wish.com”
“Oh they ARE a lucky dip of a site!”, the man exclaimed.
“Any complaints to the ombudsman!” added the genie with a conclusive air,
producing a document covered in the relevant administrative information from,
well it was hard to tell where from.

The man, playing catch up in his mind, took the pamphlet, almost absently-
mindedly saying “And I can’t wish for more wishes…”

It never ceased to amaze the genie. Humans and THAT question. A recent meta-
study by The Haaland Institute of Genieology found that an astonishing 92% of
humans asked for more wishes. Which really did make genies laugh, even after
all this time. Heart’s desires are like cyanide pills. If you think you need more
than one of either, you need a better understanding of both.

If page 75 of The Compendium didn’t make it clear, two weeks in the field quickly
did. When offered the satisfaction of their heart’s desire, only the ignorant quibble
over quantity.

Long ago, it HAD been policy to offer three wishes. Over time however, genies
realised the quickest way to reveal to humans what they needed was to
repeatedly give them what they wanted. They cottoned on soon enough. At least
some of them did. Eventually, orthodoxy moved from the ‘three wishes’ model to
‘As many as they ask for…’

It had revolutionised the work. Apart from one small bump in the road it had been
an unqualified success. Granted that bump was a thirty-year conflagration about
whether ethics required genies to inform humans they had unlimited wishes (the
‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ civil war, ending thirty years later with 500,000+
casualties.) That aside, no one had a bad word to say about it.

Once that unpleasantness was resolved in the positive however, breaking

humans this news was one of the most enjoyable parts of the process. There
were as many ways of doing it as there were genies. Some were aggressive,
some were playful. This particular genie favoured feigned indignation.

Slapping a betrayed look on his face and snapped back “Obvious is it?!”
“I’m sorry?”
“Well I don’t forgive you!” he yelled, whacking the man on the back yet harder
again.
“I am ALL POWERFUL. You think I CAN’T?! I can give you ten wishes right now.

The genie began counting upwards.

“One!”
A new car appeared beside them. The man recoiled.
“Two!”
Xxxxxxx
The counting continued, with each number a new thing popped into existence.
After six the man realised that he had absolutely loved
“Everything so far?” interrupted the genie. The man stood gobsmacked.
“That’s right. I can read your desires too. I don’t know what you think you know
about genies, but this genie is a wish machine.

Humbled, the man managed to mumble, “I thought those were rules.”

Dripping with disdain, the genie gave him a look.

The still waters of his shame were disturbed by the penny dropping. The man
looked up, disbelieving.
“Wait. So I can have a million?”
“You can have a million. You can have a billion. You can have the sort of ‘illion’
that humans don’t even have a word for. As many as you wish. I’ll stand on my
record.”
“I’m sorry?”
“That’s okay. No human has ever lasted a hundred. Most don’t make it to ten.”
A flash of uncertainty filled the man’s face. “You speak as if the wisher endures
an ordeal rather than you!” Tucking every trace of pity away behind a deferential
smile, the genie merely replied “Hmm?”
“I’m fairly sure I only need one. But it’ll be nice to wish for an umbrella too in case
it’s raining.”
The genie looked insistently at the man.
“Indeed. Now shall we take care of formalities?!”

Unsure of what was being asked of him, the man stammered, “Um…I…wish for a
million wishes?”

With a great WHOOOOOOSH, an enormous scoreboard burst into existence

behind him. Plastered on the front of it, was “NUMBER OF WISHES. 1,000,001”
A deep-rooted part of his brain designed to stop him being eaten caused him to
him to cock his head around sharply.
“Whoa!”
He surveyed the scoreboard. The number was composed of analogue pieces,
like an airport departure board, and reminiscent of an old clock he’d had in his
room as a child.

“Well don’t keep us all waiting. What’s wish number two?!”

At this point, most people take a moment to put themselves in the Man’s place,
and wonder what they’d ask for. Maybe you’re doing it right now. The Man did
not think this. He’d dreamt of this moment obsessively for years.

The dream was always the same. He’d find the genie and make his wish, but just
before it came true, he’d wake up in his bed, confused and disappointed. He
thought this must be because he was creating the dream. How could his
imagination produce things if he’d never had them?

Nevertheless, it was scary how accurate his dream had been. Granted, his genie
had been red instead of yellow and he was startled to realise it was only when
you met a real one, that you realised that genies smelled like whatever your
favourite food was.

This was a tactic that genies had evolved, as they found that humans made
much more entertaining wishes when they were ravenous. They called it
“shopping hungry.”
The Man knew exactly what he desired. He knew all the pitfalls. Genies were
notorious tricksters. It was crucial you were specific and clear about what you
wanted.

The stories were legendary. The man who asked to be world famous and
immediately became known as a notorious pedo. The incel who asked to be
irresistible to women and got torn limb from limb by a lustful mob. The lady who
wanted to speak to her pets only to discover they all hated her.

Cruel wishes were out. Genies were experts at channelling universal currents of
poetic justice to direct a comeuppance your way. There were no end of traps for
new players.

There was an art to wishing and he was sure he knew it. He’d researched,
analysed and deduced not only what he wanted, but how to get it. Written it out.
Everything. He had virtuous reasons. It wasn’t vindictive, it didn’t spite anyone. In
actuality it helped people far beyond him.

“Enough dramatic pauses…” the genie chirped, “…does master know what he
wants?!”
“I do,” the man said, pulling out a notepad, the paper worn and smooth from
years of fretful fingering.
 Chapter 2 - The Wish

The genie calmly added, “If at any point, if you desire your wish to be over, just
say so with your heart. You will return back here, and everything will be as it
was.” The weight of why that was even an option sat unspoken, then evaporated
with one word from the genie.

“Ready?”

“Ready.” said the man. And he made his wish. It wasn’t a wish as you or I might
think of one. It wasn’t simple. It couldn’t be contained in a sentence. No, this was
an opus. An ideal life that he’d painted for himself in immense richness, no detail
overlooked.

It covered everything: his career (he wanted to be world famous for his artwork
which he’d jettisoned at the altar of his job), his partner (Charlotte, a woman he’d
dated a few years ago but who had left him for unsatisfactory reasons), wealth
(more zeros than a bankrupt’s balance sheet), possessions (yachts, jets,
beachside properties, islands) and most importantly, power and influence.

And so, confident, he opened his mouth, and spoke. Soon after, he felt the words
disappear as the genie probed into his heart and pulled his wish straight out. He
didn’t know what these rubes kidnapped by aliens were complaining about. Being
probed was lovely.

The colours in the forest around him began streaking together, blurring into what
seemed like a black hole, if that black hole happened to be located in a forest.
“Forest holes are much prettier than space black holes,” he thought absently.
“Better colours.” Then, just as suddenly as the forest began melting, a new
reality, THE reality that he’d wished for, coalesced around him.

He found himself in what a quick glance revealed to be a penthouse apartment at

a dizzying height. Shocked at just how much he loved every single design
decision, he turned around, only for his progress to be halted by Charlotte’s kiss.
He kissed her back, with an intensity that matched the emptiness inside him.
Feeling that emptiness flooding full of joy and happiness, he felt Charlotte grab
his arm and balance herself.
“Careful! I’ll drop your drink!”
He looked down to see and smell what seemed like quite a peaty scotch, neat.
His favourite.
As time would go on, he would discover every single thing he had wished for, he
possessed. He looked around at the life that he’d spent almost every moment of
his recent life dreaming about. And he was happy.

And the man lived. And lived. And lived. But one day, many years later, the man,
disbelieving, found himself unhappy again. That initial happiness he’d felt had
receded into the past. His happiness had, traversed that well-trodden road from
“Is” to “Was”.

Wondering if he’d actually even been happy at all he was shocked to discover
that deep inside his heart, he no longer wanted this life. A tear (not his first) fell
from his eye, the alkaline salt dissolving the last diaphanous wisp of hope that it
would all get better. As soon as that hopelessness made contact with his heart,
just like that, he was back in the forest again.

The genie stood in front of him. He had a strange sensation that the genie had
been in exactly the same position when the forest had begun swirling. As if not
one moment had passed. He remembered the swirling. That had been a lifetime
ago!

He looked down at his hands, which he’d watched slowly wrinkle along with his
joy. His hands! His hands were young again! Had his joys, his heartbreak, his
dreams and fears, successes and failures. Had all of that happened in the blink
of an eye?

“No good?” the genie asked, quizzically. “What went wrong? Forgot to wish for
the umbrella huh?”

The man was struck by how old he felt. He almost couldn’t reconcile the younger
man who’d made that wish with the man he was now. Of course he couldn’t.
Although a forty year old stared back at him from the mirror, he was seventy
years old.

What HAD gone wrong? His paintings had been world famous. The acclamation
was indescribable. He’d loved every minute of that. He’d been flown worldwide to
studio openings and art conferences. An endless litany of fans, associates and
hangers-on only ever paused from the constant job of lauding him to praise him a
little bit too.

Acclaim however, was a demanding mistress. And although Charlotte was there,
exactly as he’d wished, he found that he wasn’t. He travelled within an inch of his
life, but without an inch of his wife.
Eventually, unable to share him with the world, Charlotte had left him, again, but
this time with their children. Hurt and confused, he’d turned to the easy (for a
man of his fame) indulgences of sex, intoxicants and most any sort of hedonism
one could name. The next decade were a blur of bad decisions disguised as
good ideas, untethered from any skerrick of responsibility or normality.

Eventually finding that to be a tunnel that led nowhere, he found himself in front
of his easel with painter’s block, his inspiration having departed around the same
time as his wife. Out of nowhere, a thought kicked down the door of his mind and
burst in unannounced. “What’s the point? End it.”

He’d found himself back in the forest soon after, shaken. Unfortunately, the genie
wasn’t in the mood for reflection.

“I’m going to need your next wish please.”

And so, put on the spot, he improvised his next wish by modifying the life he’d
just lived, keeping the things he liked but adding things he’d clearly regretted, like
‘more friends’. He kept the art but focused on being famous within one country so
that he wouldn’t travel as much. Finally he switched out Charlotte for Jenna, his
first proper girlfriend. WHAT had he been thinking with Charlotte? Jenna was the
real one that got away.

Again, the forest streaked around him, then resolved into his second attempt at
happiness. Twenty-five years later the man found himself in his car, alone, ruing
another failed marriage and the friends he’d habitually driven away because he’d
never made time for them. He looked over at the hose and thought that it would
fit snugly around the exhaust pipe. His head slumped, then again, the forest.

“Hmmmmm….” the genie quipped, “third time lucky?”

“I um…”
“Come on let’s have it, next wish please!” And so it would go.

The moment about two hundred years later, when he found himself back in the
forest for the ninth time. The man would later admit that was the moment he
began to panic.

The next ten thousand years were a blur. Any semblance of a plan long since
packed away in the attic the Man threw himself every which way into life after life.

Fame!
Obscurity!

Chasing different paths to happiness.

 Religion
Atheism
Agnosticism
Extremism
Jihad

Wearing mask after mask.

Addiction
Austerity

Each time steadfast in the hope that surely, after all this time, happiness was just
around the corner.

Honesty
Deceit

But always hidden, unspoken; the fear that even a million wishes wouldn’t be
enough.

Courage
Cowardice

That he would never be happy. Could never be.

Duplicity
Integrity

That there was something so fundamentally missing, so broken, that even a

genie and a million wishes couldn’t bring him happiness.
 Chapter 3 - The Omega Man

By the end, it was no Trumpian boast to say that he’d lived longer than any
human.
Thousands of years, some people said a million. People say maybe Methuselah
lived longer? No, he’d lived the most years. No-one lived longer than him.

As immortal beings, genies were NOT soft touches. This genie was no different.
He had seen everything, taken pleasure in watching humans die because their
wishes were cavalier, cruel or ignorant. But this man had persisted longer than
anyone the genie had ever seen, hurling himself against the wall of life again and
again, always illuminated by the flickering flame of hope. And the genie took pity.

He looked at the thrashed and broken man that barely remained standing before
him.

“Master. May I ask what you really want?”

“Isn’t it obvious! I want to be happy!”
“So what is the problem?”
Through the tears, the man spat out, “I don’t know what to wish for to be happy!!”
“I’m sorry master? Once more?”

“I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO WISH FOR TO BE HAPPY!”

As he yelled the phrase, almost keening, each word soaked in the pain of
countless lifetimes of scuppered hope, the genie gently choked his words at two
crucial moments.
“I…hnnnnn…WISH…kkkkng…TO BE HAPPY!”

“To be happy master?” the genie quipped with the wry grin containing a billion
years of wisdom.
“Now that IS a good wish.” And, with a smile as broad as his knowledge of the
genie arts, he raised his arms outwards and unclenched his fingers.

As the genie’s fingers unclenched, the man’s pain flowed out of him. He felt
himself enveloped in a warm blanket of bliss.

Later, in an AMA (ask me anything) on Reddit, the Genie explained how to

produce happiness in a human. It was actually very simple. You just took hold of
the knob that controlled acceptance. And turned it up to eleven. Or took denial
and turned it down to negative one. Potato potarto, it was the same dial.

Shockingly for a discussion on the internet, this had not gone down well.
The Reddit humans were indignant. ACCEPTANCE? Of anything? No, of
EVERYTHING?! Madness!

Surely, not placing minimum standards on life and just que sera, sera-ing your
way along. That was capitulation. You might as well round up your standards,
sign their death warrants and sweep them onto the Compromise Express running
non-stop from Surrender Station to a vomit stained gutter somewhere.

There wouldn’t be one adult ticket aboard. Because everyone boarded holding
concessions. Those concessions weren’t grounds for a discounted ticket. Those
concessions WERE your ticket.

It was a common misunderstanding. The genie tried to explain in this interaction

with @HURTHUMAN

@HURTHUMAN
I suffered repeated physical abuse at the hands of a family member. That person
has never apologised to me. How can you tell me to accept that? How can that
be acceptable?

@THREEWISHES
It isn’t acceptable. but you must accept it. And you’re right to demand an
apology. But wrong to demand one. One of humanity’s problems is the fact that
many words share multiple meanings. This makes the already herculean task of
understanding life using words that little bit harder. For example, the word
“demand” means both

Demand1 (verb): to ask authoritatively.

“I demand you apologise to me sir!”

Demand2 (verb): to require; need.

“My happiness demands that you apologise for what you did to me.”

Similarly, the word “accept” means both

Accept1 (verb): to receive as adequate.

“I accepted the abuse for years as I was much more afraid of being
alone”
Accept2 (verb): to acknowledge.

“Since they can’t be changed, I accept the things I’ve done and had done
to me.”

The abuse you suffered was morally wrong and you mustn’t accept1 it. But you
must accept2 it. You must demand1 an apology. But you must not demand2 one.

Demanding1 acknowledgment is an expression of one’s dignity, self-respect and

power. But demanding2 acknowledgment before you’ll accept2 something is
disempowering, as it requires other people to accept2 things before you do.

The genie had tried to put it as clearly as he could, and even then Reddit was
ablaze with the flames directed at him.

This was so much easier in Sanskrit

The Internet exhausted him. Only humans could invent a network connecting
them all then use it to hate each other.

Far from people arguing with a genie in an obscure subreddit however, the Man
was experiencing this truth rather than reading it. In his bliss, he was
overwhelmed by the truth of the genie’s words.

Accepting2 things that happened only meant accepting1 what was happening
now, NOW. It didn’t mean accepting1 it one second longer. He could accept2 that
he was an alcoholic AND accept2 that he wanted to stop drinking. One didn’t
preclude the other. One fact, it necessitated it.

He remembered in his first life, the moment when deep inside he’d realised
something was fundamentally wrong with his relationship with Charlotte. Well,
that HE was what was wrong. He continually prioritised himself. He said he
wanted Charlotte, but he realised that he’d only wanted the idea of her, not the
imperfect being with worries, joys and needs she actually was.

He realised that his distance was more than geographic, it was emotional. Far
from his hollow protestations, he wasn’t a slave to his success. If anything, his
success gave him more options. No, he was actively choosing to distance
himself because he felt that his personal success made him happier than his
family did.

But such a thought immediately made him feel like a beast! What kind of man
would think such things? There must be something in him that was fundamentally
broken. He’d was utterly ashamed by the truth. The idea of accepting2 it was
unthinkable. Because accepting2 it meant accepting1 it. Unacceptable1!

Thankfully, his ego had provided an easy out, whispering sweet reassuring
nothings into his ears. He was fine! That was just who he was! Actually, it was
Charlotte who wasn’t supporting him! She didn’t understand how important what
he did was. Worse still, she was using the kids against him! He was the real
victim.

Fuelled by this image of himself he became a victim, wronged. He became the

best kind of victim, a world famous one. Every now and then, the truth bubbled
up. He was in charge of his life and could take responsibility at any time. But
every time it did, his ego swept in with a flute, and like the Pied Piper of Himelin,
led him out the door.

Eventually he was an excessively leveraged investor, up to his eyeballs in debt to

his vanity, to this distorted reflection of himself. He would look into the mirror and
demand his reflection look a certain way. This very much confused the rays of
light that would pass through on their way through the universe. They would have
liked to turn and ask the other light rays ‘What’s with that guy?’ if only they
weren’t so damned fast.

The debt he owed was in honesty. It would be discharged the very moment he
was willing to accept1 his reflection.

He hadn’t of course. Stricken with shame, he thought that accepting2 his

reflection meant accepting1 it forever. Signing his death warrant. Forever a beast.
But it didn’t mean that. It only meant accepting2 that by ‘beast’ what he meant
was a vulnerable and flawed human being, wounded by the ordeals he’d endured
and the life he’d lived. An acknowledged beast could change, an
unacknowledged one was just dangerous.

With as much regret as one can feel in a state of absolute serenity, he accepted2
that if he’d just accepted2 who he was at the time, he could have made a choice.
To either change his priorities, or reaffirm them. Either way, it probably could
have saved ten years.

With honesty, he and Charlotte could have mapped a route forward. But
aggressively denying reality meant being utterly blind to who and where he WAS.
And that did make route mapping difficult.

Many have tried getting from A to B without knowing A. Few succeed. Setting off
gung-ho from an unknown A is how many a person has ended up in all manner
of screwy places, including ironically, drunk, in a gutter with no standards. He’d
been there, and he’d been miserable. The gutter however, having no standards
and accepting2 things as they were, was fine.
 Chapter 4 - ‘The Fear’

The man reflected on the bliss he felt. It wasn’t unfamiliar. He had been blissfully
happy in the lives that he’d lived. He knew that. But lasting happiness eluded
him. Contentedness was like an eel that slipped his grasp the harder he grabbed
at it, greased by his very desire.

Nearby, the genie absent mindedly squeezed his hands together and thought
about linen.

NO! The Man’s heart was suddenly gripped by a fear of losing the bliss. Ah,
HERE was a familiar one that had preceded many a beer, scotch, absinthe, line
or needle. His mind flinched at the wall of memories. He WOULDN’T! He couldn’t
go back to the way things were. His serenity leaking out of him, pierced by his
fear, the Man grabbed at the eel one more time.

Any residual calm unravelled, his mind overwhelmed by the possibility, no,
UNAVOIDABILITY of losing the bliss. Safe in this knowledge, it abandoned ship,
diving into the ocean. In its haste, it didn’t even take a life jacket. And within this
dark ocean of fear, embryonic but menacing, imperceptible but undeniably there,
the first seeds of pain began their brutal mitosis.

Monitoring on autopilot nearby whilst he pondered pillow choices for a soiree he

was planning in the lamp that weekend, was the genie. He looked over and
WHOOPS-A-oh these DAISY pillows look nice!, saw the Man in a fair bit more
pain than the genie had original planned before getting distracted by floral pillow
casings. The genie unclenched his hands and went back to the catalogue.

The man gasped, floored by a tidal wave of relief. And, when the wave washed
away, again, bliss. Salty bliss, but still. The relief was palpable.

“Are daisys too bold? No, I am bold!” the genie muttered and, at the word “bold”,
thoughtlessly formed a fist.

ARGH! There it was again! The fear, the pain. He’d only been happy for seconds!
Had it only been seconds? Who cares, it had definitely been less than
FOREVER.

This was it. It was going to disappear forever wasn’t it? He heard the telltale
footsteps of a panic attack approaching the door of his mind

“Genie, stop trying so hard! Whichever pillows you have will be perfect...”
Another wave of relief. Within this one, the beginnings of a feeling began to stir…

“Argh..but then Mum IS coming! And you know Mum”

…before swiftly being barged out of the way by his panic.

“They do match the couch though I do like that…”

Again, bliss. Again, that feeling.

“buuuuut…”

And again, the fear.

The man’s bliss marched in relentless syncopation with the genie’s uncertainty.
After a while as the genie approached a decision the Man recognised a pattern.

That feeling he’d had grew stronger. There was a very simple way to stop the
cycle. It was right there. But he couldn’t quite grasp it. Every time his mind
approached it, his zen would be T-boned by his distrust and he’d be thrown clear
of the collision, landing smack bang in the middle of another cycle.

But with constancy from the genie, who, was coming around to just forgetting
what his Mum might think, trusting his gut and buying the damned pillows
eventually the man learned to trust…what? What was he trusting? The genie?
His feelings? Life itself?

“I like them. If Mum doesn’t like them that’s fine. She doesn’t have to, I just have
to accept that. I’m no worse a person if she gets angry about stupid pillows, that’s
her own problem. SOLD!”

And with that, a flood burst through the dam of the Man’s mind.
 Chapter 5 - The Revelation

He saw the truth in infinite different ways, bathed in acceptance’s gentle glow
and he was holding a kaleidoscope up to its light. His mind bubbled in a quantum
foam of understanding, a never ending succession of metaphors reflecting the
same truth in different ways.

These understandings were vanishingly brief but arrived in his mind complete
and all at once. Like a chaotic yet ordered beam of subatomic particles, each
lasting only the merest instant before flashing out of existence to be replaced by
another, and another and another.

We give the credit of a bold stride forward to the intrepid front foot. But a strong
stride is driven by the back foot, firmly planted from the point of departure.
Without this, you trip and fall. The back foot is acceptance. The point of
departure is reality. Far from submission to reality, acceptance is power over it.
The more grounded in reality you are, the more strongly you can plant your foot
in it and push off. The front foot of one stride becomes the back foot of the next.
In truth, there is no front and back foot.

There is no spoon…

Jolted by his mind throwing a punchline into his train of thought, that metaphor
drifted away and was replaced by another…

…the first injection you get is the worst. The injection lasts a second, but the
terror of anticipation lasts infinitely longer…

and that replaced by…

…the first love you have is the best. You have no experience, no expectations
and no fear. Such unprecedently deep love produces unprecedented joy.

But if it ends, unprecedented pain. You close yourself off and demand2 such pain
never happen again! But it’s heads, pain. Or tails, joy. It’s the underside of it. The
price. Only a husk is immortal.

But why hadn’t he been able to accept anything? Pain? Death? Reality?! He
realised that acceptance required faith. It required trust.

Faith that the universe was just. That underpinning its immense mystery, there
was some balance. Some order. That there was a reason for his pain.
He’d spent so many of his lives feeling like he was bad, that people were worse
for knowing him. That he was a perpetrator of pain. But in other lives he’d be a
victim. Of violence, from parents and partners. Of psychological torture. He’d hurt
and been hurt, been oppressed and done the oppressing. Over his lives, he’d
experienced the full spectrum of the best and the worst that life had to offer.

This experience brought him faith. It allowed him to see perpetrators for what
they were. Unhealed victims. He’d been monstrous, but it was only ever an
expression of the unhealed pain that someone else had inflicted on him.

He saw that everyone were both victims and perpetrators, all at once. That
identifying ourselves powerlessly as one or the other rather than as creators of
our own lives was the thing that condemned us. To hopelessness. And to pain.

He saw it now. No, he had that backwards both in concept and in spelling. He
WAS it.

There was no great truth ‘out there’. HE, he himself was the great truth. We all
were. Our lives, our choices, the pain and joy that resulted. Existence, the simple
act of being contained all the truth that there was to know in the universe. About
happiness and sadness, treating people well and treating them badly, about
connection and loneliness.

All he’d needed to do was to look. No, he’d done that. He’d done nothing but that.
No, all he’d needed to do was to accept. And he wept.

NO, he hadn’t been an alcoholic. NO, he wasn’t in crippling existential pain.

Lonely?! Are you kidding?! It CERTAINLY wasn’t because he was scared of
being alone and he DEFINITELY didn’t have that fear because his father had
abandoned him when he was a child. No, no, no, no, but, but, but, but..

Happiness was accepting each moment for what it was and not putting demands
on it. The man realised that the reason his achievements had made him happy
was not actually because of the achievements. No. In that moment, reality
matched his demands, and so he’d accepted it.

It was the acceptance that was the source of his happiness. Not the
achievement. That was why he’d always end up unhappy again once his
achievement became the new normal. Wherever he found himself, the only
constant was that he was never enough.

Acceptance did require compromise. But only with reality. If there was one thing
you could say with great confidence about reality, it was that it had a spotless
track record in the field of happening. He gazed back over his lives and saw his
pain as the price of the relentless futility of fighting it. Reality wasn’t something to
be denied. It was something to plant your back foot into and push off. Honesty
shouldn’t be scary. In fact it gave you bigger boots to plant down.
 Chapter 6 – The Lens.

Viewed through this lens, life changed. It was less viewing life through a different
lens, than viewing life like he WAS a lens. Lenses were the personification of
acceptance. Lenses indiscriminately allowed whichever light came their way to
pass through them, all whilst refracting, intensifying and focussing it.

Life wasn’t this relentless thing that had to be wrestled down. At its best, life
could be something that flowed through you, gratefully received then nudged in
whichever direction you wanted.

He realised that he’d rather unfruitfully been like a lens which blocked most of the
light that came his way on the grounds that it was not the right KIND of light.

Quite wistfully, he supposed that this was the reason he’d been so very dull.

When he’d felt joy in his life it was because he’d accepted life and it had passed
through him. He realised he’d that this had been true in joy and in sadness, even
in the everyday, the mundane. When he’d allowed himself to be swept up by his
favourite piece of music, the chords and vibrations for one wonderful peaceful
moment silenced the chattering voices in his head and for 3 minutes 42 he’d
been a lens.

With his favourite piece of music permeating his mind, he felt the world pass
through him. Rather than being something that happened to him, he was
something happening to it. Or was it wrong to even think of him and it?

The colours around him began streaking together, or did he begin spreading out
around them? Confusingly his final thought was of a Reddit post by
@THREEWISHES stating that having the same word for multiple things wasn’t
the only problem with human language.

Before he could think about what that meant suddenly, he came to, back in the
now dusky light of the forest.

The genie stood before him, regarding him for the first time as something near an
equal.
“Would Master like any more wishes? Is there anything else you want?”
The man stood, but felt weightless.
“No thank you genie,” he said, smiling gently, and put the lamp down.
“Let’s just let things be, shall we?”
“That might be for the best.” the genie smiled.
“Oh wait,” the man said, reaching down and grabbing the lamp again with
renewed purpose. “Maybe I’ll take that umbrella.”