Storytelling Week 5: The Other Side

Image Information: The Grass is Always Greener: Source: Be More With Less

            It began when Asha was ten. Playing in the field a few days after his birthday, he encountered a young boy tending to a flock of sheep. The boy was playing a beautiful tune on a small handheld harp, softly singing along. All of his sheep were lounging peacefully around him, grazing, and never wandering off. Asha saw this and became very incensed, for his small bag of marbles was nothing in comparison to the gift of a musical harp. This poor shepherd boy had something so much better than his marbles. So in a fit he threw his marbles into the field and ran home. Once he was there, he begged his parents for a better gift for his birthday, something that would inspire him to make beautiful music as well. That week his parents gave him a brand new lute which he tried for weeks to play but was unable to make music as beautiful as the shepherd boy. This was the first time that Asha yearned for the best, but if would not be the last.

Years passed and Asha remained unable to settle for anything less than the best. On his eighteenth birthday, Asha’s parents approached him with an offer to marry Mareesh, who was a very beautiful maiden from a nice, middle class family. But Asha was not impressed, because although Mareesh was a very wonderful woman, he just felt that there was more out there for him. So his parents didn’t make the match for him and instead he spent the next year looking for the best possible wife that his village had to offer him. It took years, but Asha finally found a wonderful young woman that he was confident was the very best that he could find to make into his wife. And deep in his own conviction, Asha was very happy with his married life and the two beautiful children that it had gifted him with. Every day he looked at his wife when woke up and had a sense of happiness in his heart that he had waited to find the most perfect wife he could find. And after he awoke he made breakfast and played with his young children—his heart full of love.

But one day, years after the beginning of their marriage, Asha spending the day waking through the fields sat down to rest and play on the lute that he had once gotten as a young child. While playing the lute a young maiden approached him and lamented on how beautiful his singing was. Asha cared not about his lute, for the beauty of the young woman had completely overwhelmed him. At first glance, he immediately knew that she had been the maiden that he was looking for so many years ago before he married his wife. This right here, was the best that he could do and so he took it.

He proposed to the maiden that they could run away together and live in harmony. She accepted and he gave no further thought to the family that he had once had. Asha’s heart was once again full with love and conviction. He once again woke up and played with his children, stared at his wife and felt happy. But while his heart was now full, his mind was still looking for the next best thing. And he continued to take walks in the woods surrounding his new home, playing the lute, and searching, waiting, for someone to approach him and offer him the next best thing.

Author’s Note:

I wrote this story based on the story from Fayiz and the Peri Wife from the Persian Fairy Tales Unit. This story is about a man who leaves his family when he finds something better. His new wife and children are fairy-folk and he is given all of these rules to follow if he wants to keep this life. But over time he begins to miss his old wife and children and wants to visit them. He doesn’t want to go back to them, but in the process of visiting them he manages to lose his new wife and family and ultimately loses everything in the process. So I was kind of inspired to write about a man who is always looking for the next best thing—a man who finds happiness only to overthink it and ultimately lose himself and everything he already had in the process. A lot of these stories talk about revenge and leaving your wives and I just wanted to comment on it from the standpoint of a man who is doing all of these things who doesn’t even seem to realize that he is ruining everything in his search for perfection.  

Bibliography:

Persian Tales, translated by D.L.R. Lorimer and E.O. Lorimer and illustrated by Hilda Roberts (1919). Fayiz and the Peri Wife