THE ORIGIN OF DAY AND NIGHT

The creation of our world, began with a world that is not our own. This world lived under the light of an eternal moon that while not very bright, illuminated the world with a gentle glow. For the most part everything was perfect. The earth was completely flat and for some reason perfect for growing food, the rivers were clean and calm, and the people who lived there lived in complete harmony with one other, as it provided them everything the ever needed to survive.

However in this utopia lived a man who seemed to never quite belong. Let us call him Henry. Henry was a greedy man that never helped anyone but himself, and often got food from the rest of the village without contributing to the harvest.

Henry was insatiable. Despite the perfect world he lived in, he found that only his physical needs were met. He wanted something that no else had; he wanted to feel like he was superior, his ego demanded more.

So one day, on the way to getting more food Henry stumbled upon a shiny gem in the bottle of a ditch. This gem was the brightest thing he ever saw, even brighter than the moon above him. It seemed to brighten up everything that was in its vicinity with a golden glow that emanated with an intense heat as you approached it. He wanted to take this gem, and show it off to everyone in the village.

 However as he tried to take this gem he found that it was stuck into the earth. In his anguish Henry furiously tried pulling it out, using everyone ounce of strength to remove it. When he finally did, the gem began to float above him, flying higher and higher until it finally knocked out the moon above him and his village.

 Yet rather than being concerned over the wellbeing of the moon Henry chased after it instead, trying to keep it for himself the way he could not do for the gold shiny gem that now was above him. However he would find that in his attempt to steal the moon it would then proceed to fly up and knock out the gem as well. To this very day Henry continues this constant chase after the moon, and this gem we now call sun, his greed effectively creating the cycle of day and night.

 Unfortunately his village, not used to these cycles, began to suffer. Their crops rather than flourishing began to dry out. In order to stop this they found that the river provided them with the water to bring them back to life.

 Yet these resources were finite and soon families started banding together, competing, claiming, and fighting each other’s for the resources they needed to survive. They built walls around certain crops in order to keep others from sharing it with them, they blocked off certain sections of the river so that each family could have their own supply, and finally their lack or resources drove them into killing other animals for food, and later just sport. Soon these families would turn into the modern civilizations we are now part of today, still struggling to fend for themselves.

Thus the world transitioned from the peaceful moonlit utopia it once was, into the constant fight for survival has become today, all because of the greed one man, that has since spread to the rest of humanity.

COMMENTARY:

My family while very intrigued by the story, also found it extremely disheartening. They were perturbed by MY negative view of humanity. I felt somewhat guilty, as my intention with this tale was to not portray humanity as greedy, but to purely create aN entertaining story, that would explain the cycle of day and night in way that would emulate the tradition of oral storytelling. From this I have found that one must be careful about the stories they tell, because it may influence others into having a negative outlook on life itself, even though it may not be their intention to do so.