Missing the Point In Both Story and Life

This very short story by Raphael Barrett, written 115 years ago in Paraguay, sparked confusion when I posted it a year or two back.

It seems reading for comprehension is now another lost skill

This parable is not about religion or borders, but about how easy it is to miss embracing the small risks of life while doing everything wrong to ruin relationships with others and self.

• “Where is my old peace?”

• “I'm poisoned by distrust and hatred.”

• “The spirit of evil has taken over me.”

If you raise chickens, be at peace with some level of predation of both fowl and egg.  Be at peace with the pecking order and the velociraptor-like aggression of the dinosaur that became a rooster.

Give your neighbor some eggs and maybe a few chicks; the cost is nothing and the gesture is everything.

Above all, stop fighting life, and by fighting it, lose it.

Cut with the grain, rather than against.

You see, there is no lesson about God or Jesus in this story, no lecture about Communism or immigration, no paean to rid yourselves of all possessions.

This is simply a story about keeping perspective, and by keeping perspective, keeping joy in your life.

HENS

As long as I possessed nothing more than my bed and my books, I was happy. 

I now own nine chickens and a rooster, and my soul is disturbed. 

Property has made me heartless.

Every time I bought a chicken, I tied it to a tree for two days, to impose my address on it, destroying in its fragile memory the love of its old residence. 

I fixed my yard fence, in order to keep my birds from leaving, and to keep out the four- and two-foot predators.

I isolated myself, fortified the border, drew a diabolical line between my neighbor and I. 

I divided humanity into two categories; me, owner of my chickens, and the others who could take them from me.

I defined the crime. The world was filled with putative thieves, and for the first time I cast a hostile look from the other side of the fence.

My rooster was too young. The neighbor's rooster jumped the fence and started courting my hens and embittering my rooster's existence. I stoned the intruder, but he jumped the fence and hightailed it to my neighbor's house. 

I gathered all the eggs and my neighbor hated me. I saw his face over the fence, his inquisitive and hostile gaze, identical to mine. His chickens crossed the fence, and devoured the wet corn that I had put out. 

The alien chickens looked like criminals to me. I chased them and, blinded by rage, I killed one. 

The neighbor made a big deal of this. He didn't want to accept a compensation. He solemnly removed the chicken carcass, and instead of eating it, he showed it to his friends, recounting the tale of my imperialist brutality.

I had to strengthen the fence, increase surveillance, raise, in a word, my war budget.  

The neighbor has a dog that is determined to get in and kill my chickens. I'm thinking of getting a revolver.

Where is my old peace? 

I'm poisoned by distrust and hatred. 

The spirit of evil has taken over me.

Once I was a man, but now I am a landlord.