A Painting--- Destroyed

It was a beautiful landscape, oil on canvas with hills and trees and rivers. Meadows ending in flower bushes just next to the farm and so much more. The artist had obviously spent months of thinking and creating this piece. Truly it was a masterpiece. It was done so beautifully, kept so alive that one could almost see the farm animals on the far side of the canvas graze. No wonder when one creates a masterpiece like this, the attachment and proud come in heavy doses. It was certainly the most prized painting by the painter.

While the painter was busy creating more art work to augment the masterpiece he had created; the master piece itself was not getting as much daily attention. And then there came the notorious bunch. The kids from the neighborhood. The group that was notorious for doing nothing but bad. They saw the masterpiece and decided to own it. But how could a number of kids own one piece of painting.

Question was difficult but solution as they thought was not as much of a problem. They would simply divide the areas on the painting and own those. So the farm goes to the fist and the mash goes to the second and then the far side mountains to the third and so on. While they had spoken of the ownership still they would argue about the extent to which their dominion on the masterpiece expended. Each one wanting to bleed into the next one’s territory.  The arguments started becoming heated and soon there will be punches and knuckles involved with the arguments.

Again the solution came easy. Since they didn’t take the pain of creating it so they didn’t care at all about the whole creation. They were just concerned about the parts that they had reserved as their own dominion. The big buy in the bunch; one fine day picked a piece of dark carbon stick and started drawing lines on the painting, dividing everyone’s territory in a manner that he claimed was just. The poor painting was smudged and no longer look like the masterpiece that the artist had created. 

“Wait this is the bush on the side of the river so it is a part of the river that I own.” One kid claimed. “No the bush is mine” the other kid retorted. And that lead to disagreement about drawn boundaries and a fight like they never had before.

The loud arguments and the sound of fists breaking on the teeth and backs were heard by the painter who so far has quietly been working in his studio next door on his next creation. He came running and tried to end the commotion, but soon he saw his painting. His masterpiece was ruined, it had jiggered lines all over the place. Right around the lines on some spots were smudges of blood that some of the fighting kids have shed while, “saving his territory”.

Sad and angry at the same time, the painter looked at them and….

I will not tell you what the painter did but you think for yourself if you were the painter what would you do in this situation?

After you have answered, look at a world map and the beauty of the rivers and valleys and rain-forests and mountains and so on. Now bring the international border lines on the same map. You will see how we the people have ruined the painting that the master painter so painstakingly created to its perfection. Think hard now and answer, would it not be fair for the master painter to give you (and me and everyone) the same punishment that you had decided for the kids who ruined the painting?