The Two Magical Looking Glasses

Once upon a time there was a little girl called Lyza, who had a very sick mother. On her deathbed, her mother called for her and when Lyza came to her bedside, her mother whispered:

“My dear child… I love you so much and I am so sorry that I will not be able to watch you grow and take care of you. I only have these two gifts for you that will help you navigate life. Use them wisely.”

The mother pulled two looking glasses from under her sheets and continued: “These looking glasses do not show a reflection, but you can look through them and see the world around you. One will show you Happiness and the other will show you Suffering. Up to you, my child, to choose which one you look through in your life.”

Little Lyza thought her mother was silly for saying this. Why would she ever look through the looking glass that shows her suffering, and thus make her suffer?

A few days later her mother died and Lyza felt enormous pain at her mother suddenly being gone. She felt as if a part of herself was gone and that nobody would ever be able to fill up the emptiness her mother left behind. She did not like feeling like this, so she decided to look through the Happiness looking glass. She looked through the glass at her mother who was lying dead in the bed and suddenly she felt the emptiness filling up with gratitude. She remembered all the beautiful moments they had ever shared and there were so many. She also suddenly felt certain that her mother was in a good place and that nothing bad had happened to her. Tears were streaming down her face. The maid, who had been keeping a close eye on the girl, noticed and rushed to Lyza to comfort her. She put her arm around Lyza’s shoulder and sighed: “Ooooh… it is ok to be sad, little Lyza, you will feel better with time”.

“No,” said Lyza, “I feel so happy! I am crying because I feel so happy and grateful for my mother!”

The maid did not speak, but looked shocked and hurried off. Lyza felt as if she was doing something wrong and most of all, she felt horribly alone.

“Maybe I am not supposed to be happy now” she thought, and she decided to try and look through the Suffering looking glass instead. As her eyes focused onto the scene through the lens, a feeling of loss erupted in her body. She felt it was so unfair for her mother to be taken from her. She was too young to be without a mother and her mother was too young to die. Life was unfair and she felt everything had been taken from her and that if there was a god, he must be malicious because he created death and death was a horrible thing.

“Everything is so unfair, I just want my mom!”, Lyza cried out, helpless and fearful of the future. The maid returned and soon forgot about the previous weird interaction. “Yes,” she said, “it is unfair and I am so sorry for you my dear child.” They hugged and Lyza felt understood and loved.

Lyza thought she started to understand how to use the looking glasses. “Maybe the right one to look through depends on the situation, some situations require happiness and some require suffering, but how do I know the difference? Who would know? I need to get this right!”

Lyza suddenly remembered the stories her grandfather used to tell her of a wise man who lived in a cave in the forest close to his village. Villagers used to go to the wise man for advice and he did not want anything in return, he just did not always feel like giving it to them. This made some of the villagers not like the wise man and talk badly about him in the village, and so as the years passed by, fewer and fewer people went to ask for his advice, until slowly he became more and more forgotten and people in the village were not sure if he was still alive, and basically, they did not care.

Lyza knew that her grandfather had started his own business thanks to the wise man. He had told her that when he was a young man he started working in a mine, but he was not happy there, and one day he traveled through the forest to ask the wise man for help. The wise man had been really reluctant to help him at first, asking him straight off why he should help him. Lyza’s grandfather had answered: “Because I deserve a better life”, which made the eyes of the wise man glisten and he responded: “Why do you deserve it, and not the other people working at the mine?”

“Because they do not believe they can have better, so they will never try, but I do, and I am willing to do whatever it takes to get it!”

“Alright, sit down. I will help you,” the old man had replied.

After he sat down, the wise man started talking about the world and how things work, and everything he said was so new but it all made so much sense that Lyza’s grandfather was entranced. He only remembered why he wanted the help of the wise man in the first place when the sun was already setting, so he decided to ask about it before it got too late. The wise man laughed and told him that he would figure it out, but that above all, he should trust whatever he dreamed about that night and act upon it as soon as possible. That night Lyza’s grandfather dreamed the most beautiful dream he had ever dreamed. He was a captain of a ship, sailing the 7 seas and discovering new places and people of different colors and all kinds of treasure. Obviously he was born too late for this, all of these things had already been discovered, but he believed the dream meant that he was supposed to leave and start traveling, so he gathered his savings and bought a plane ticket to Tokyo, because that was the next possible destination he could get a ticket for. And that is where he had met Lyza’s grandmother. He would always say that marrying her was the best thing he ever did in his life.

Telling this story would always make her grandfather look so happy and blessed and Lyza had always remembered the role the wise man played in it and so she decided to travel to the forest to speak to ask him her question: “How do I know when to look through which mirror?”

The journey was a long one. Many months turned into years and eventually she was almost 30 years old by the time she arrived at the forest where the wise man lived. She had lived many adventures, but those are different stories, for another time. Lyza had not looked through the glasses in all this time and with every passing year, Lyza became more somber.

When she finally arrived at the cave in the forest, the wise man was sitting outside smoking a pipe and smiling at her. She could not tell how old he was, he must be ancient, but he looked as at least as young as she did!

“I knew you would come,” he smiled, and his smile kept getting bigger, “and I do not need to hear your question to give you your answer. Do you want it?”

“Yes!” Lyza said, “More than anything!!!”

“Why would you ever want to suffer??”, he shouted, coughing smoke and almost choking in his amusement at the situation.

“I know it does not make sense to ever suffer, I knew that already when I was little, but I am torn because it seems that to be happy, I need to use the Happiness looking glass, and to be together with people, I need to use the Suffering looking glass, because nobody likes me if I am too happy.”

Lyza started crying in desperation at what to do, because even the Happiness looking glass was not able to make her happy, if it was going to make her alone.

“Why don’t you look at me through the Happiness looking glass”, the man said, in a deep whisper.

Lyza did exactly so and saw the wise man and instantly felt happier than she had ever felt, because she did not only feel her own happiness, she also felt his, she felt more connected than she had ever felt!

“You are happy too, without the looking glass!! Who are you??”

“ I am Kala, and yes I am happy, so you see, you do not have to be sad to not be alone, you can be happy.”

“But what if you are the only person in the world I can connect with?”

“Would that make you happy?”

“No!” Lyza cried, “Then I would be alone again when you go away or die!”

“Then it is not true”, the Kala winked. “Even if you think there is nobody else now, I will teach you how to make people happy, so you can create as many happy people as you want to live your life with. I have already started!” Suddenly 4 more people appeared from the forest, all smiling at Lyza. She looked at them through her looking glass. They were not happy as happy as Kala, but they were close. Lyza smiled and felt relieved.

The happiest time in the life of Lyza followed. She fell in love with Kala and he fell in love with her. She moved into his house, and together with the other people, they turned the forest into their own version of paradise. Other people visited and some people stayed, and they became a family as their home became bigger and bigger as years passed by and they all became so happy together that Lyza forgot about the looking glass altogether, since she did not need to look through it to feel happy anymore.

Meanwhile, however, Kala was becoming more and more ill. One night when he was feeling particularly bad, he called Lyza to his bed and said: “How happy you have made me these years, I thank you so much my beautiful Lyza.” Lyza started crying again and said: “Are you saying goodbye? I do not want to say goodbye yet.”

“I am not saying goodbye, if I was saying goodbye then I would say so. But this makes you unhappy. How much is enough, my love, did I not show you how to not be alone and be happy at the same time?”

“Yes, but I want to be with you,” she cried.

“You are being ungrateful, love, where is your mirror? Look through it!”

Lyza reluctantly started looking for the looking glasses, because she did not want to be happy for what was happening, she wanted him to live and for them to live forever together.

As if he was reading her thoughts, he said: “Forever is boring, forever does not have a beginning, a middle and an end, and every good story must have all three. Isn’t ours a beautiful one?”

“Yes… but I want to live more of it. I don’t want it to end yet, we have so much more to do together and to live together.”

“How much is enough, Lyza, how much do you need to be grateful for the time we have together?”

Lyza put on the glasses, immediately understood, and smiled through her tears of gratitude: “I love our story and I want to enjoy every minute of it. And not be afraid about the ending, because a new story starts when a story ends and every story is just as beautiful, not better or worse, but different. Whether we spend another minute, another day, another year or another 30 years together, I will be happy because I will have gratitude for having had something so precious in my life.”

Kala drew his last breath and Lyza hugged him tight and kissed him one last time, “Thank you so much, my dear Kala, for showing me how to live happily. I will never miss you because you will always be in my heart”

And of course, she lived, happily ever after.

The End.