The House by the River

If you walk along a wide stream for a couple of miles you will find a house. It is a small house, but a house all the same. If you jog along the same stream then you will encounter a mansion. And lastly, if you go in a car it will be the grandest house you’ve ever seen. It is impossible to see one grander. The people living in the house are not magic. In fact, they think they are living in Thaxted, which is a small town in England. The house itself is not magic. Often what drives a person is someone else. It is the same deal with this house. It is the land that is magic. The path by the river makes you see anything.

So now you ask, “Why do all walkers see the same thing, all joggers see the same thing and all drivers see the same thing?” Good question.

It is speed that triggers the path to make you see what you want to see. A very slow jogger’s feet do not hit the ground the same way that a very fast walker’s do.



Suppose I told you this was utter nonsense. What would you do? It is very important that you don’t do anything drastic because I am telling you right now that what I just told you was utter nonsense.

If you haven’t ripped up the paper and thrown it away then you are still reading it-which I certainly hope because I would much prefer that you recycle this paper. Trash puts pollution in the air as well as in streams, such as the one in our story.



So now you know the facts, mostly. You know that our story is utter nonsense and that trash is bad for the environment. What you don’t know is that underneath that utter nonsense is an ounce of truth. A kindergarten teacher would tell her students, “Put your thinking caps on.” But that make no sense at all considering the fact that our “thinking cap” is our brain, and putting it on implies that we take it off. Which, by the way, never do: the consequences are not pleasant. So I will tell you leave your brain in your head and try to use it.

Let’s analyze it backwards, which means I tell you the moral first and together we figure out why. The moral of the story is that different people experience the world in different ways at different times. OK, let’s start with the path and the stream next to it. Water is usually symbolic of life and a path is symbolic of a journey of some sort-which could mean life is a journey. Going with that approach, what does the house stand for? The house could mean many things. Houses are forms of shelter so it could stand for protection. This would mean that protection comes in all shapes and sizes and we must accept it, whether we walking, jogging, or driving. But that would give us the wrong moral. I should know, I wrote the story.

I’m going to stick with the stream being life and the path being a journey. So what’s the house? Or, the people in the house? Thaxted is a place which could mean that houses appear in different places no matter where you are. However, the fact that the people are from a different place could symbolize the diversity in this world. But because the location of the house is not specified, it could actually be in Thaxted-which would symbolize how the world is not diverse. But diversity has nothing to do with our moral.

Let’s reanalyze the water and the path. Water is blue like the sky, which could mean that the sky is sometimes on the ground. Taking that on a deeper level, it could mean that the happy things in life can turn out to be not so happy. Let’s make the path life. Now, there is a way of making this lead up to the moral. It’s not the way I was planning, but it works. So, how fast a person is moving could stand for the mood they’re in. The walking person isn’t very lively, so this would tell us that the sky is really on the ground. But this would imply that at the present time they perceive the world from an unhappy point of view. So, they see the house as tiny, which is more pessimistic than seeing it as huge. Then comes the person who is jogging. They seem to be in lighter spirits and see the house as a mansion, which is optimistic. Then comes the driver. He is lazy, and for all we know he could be watching a movie because modern cars are often equipped with DVD players. Anyway, he’s the laziest of the three and probably the most content. Unless, of course, he’s watching a bad movie. But he sees the grandest house in the world, which shows that the sky has not fallen at all.



If you have not already guessed, there are many ways to take this story apart. So I will tell you the way that I, the author, originally planned out the hidden truth behind the story. The stream and path do symbolize the fact that life is a journey. You will perceive the world differently when you are doing different things or in the middle of different experiences. The family living in Thaxted has no significance in my mind.



I hope you have not thrown this paper out because that will pollute the stream, which we now know is life, and not the fallen sky. The moral of this whole encounter is that different people analyze literature in different ways, at different times. But please remember to recycle and never, ever take off your thinking cap, even if it’s not very lively.