{"id":27,"date":"2016-02-01T23:15:57","date_gmt":"2016-02-02T06:15:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ourstory\/?p=27"},"modified":"2016-03-10T11:47:33","modified_gmt":"2016-03-10T18:47:33","slug":"27","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ourstory\/2016\/02\/01\/27\/","title":{"rendered":"The Evil that Upset the Balance (1.5)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many, many years ago,the land of the people was a different place. There was laughter and tears, happiness and joy, love and hate. For since the start of time there was good and bad. It was a perfect world and the witch people kept that balance in perfection.<\/p>\n

The witch people were the Guardians since the start of time. They were a group of 13 and their numbers never changed. 6 good and 7 bad, and that was and is still.<\/p>\n

Each year they gathered all together. it was when they presented their new inventions to the world and shared in each others company for a time. First they drank their fill and ate some of the finest foods and then enjoyed all sorts of games.<\/p>\n

And then there was the contest. Each witch told a story that shared their newest creation with world. The creations were good or bad, matching the countenance of the teller.<\/p>\n

So one told a story of men and women and children living on the land year after year. Then the other told of one person who hated another. Then another witch countered with a story of one who learned forgiveness<\/a>. And so it continued with the good and the bad witches telling their stories in turn, each one countering the one before.<\/p>\n

Soon it was the turn of the sixth and final of the bad witches to tell her story. She was not the worst of the witches and her story was not the most horrible of the stories.<\/p>\n

She told a story of one who saw all the evil that was already in the world. That was not new but then she added her invention. She added a person who saw but choose to not speak; she told a story of a person who choose to keep silent<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And of all the stories of murder and hate and jealousy and war, it was this story that shocked the witches the most. Even the bad witches gasped in shock. And the good witch who still\u00a0 had her story to tell filled it with so much love, hope, family, growth, and joy.<\/p>\n

But still with all the good things she had filled her story with, this story could not counter the one before. All the witches All of them, good and bad, turned to the witch of silence.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat story cannot be told,\u201d they cried. \u201cTake it back for we have nothing to balance it with. We have no good thing to oppose silence.\u201d They begged her to take her story back. But she couldn\u2019t. \u201cBut, of course, it was too late. For once a story is told, it cannot be called back. Once told, it is loose in the world\u201d (King, 10).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The question of evil in the world\u00a0 is often told in a Pandora’s Box-style metaphor. Its intersection with the concept of stories is interesting. Once it is out, there’s no taking it back. I really enjoyed this assignment…the creative aspect alone was fun. But also seeing the way it is experienced by people I told it to and how their reaction changed my story. <\/em><\/p>\n

My sister asked about the silence, and had a lively debate about what silence meant in this context. If I meant silence as in one’s own deeds or in a more global outlook. I found then that when I went to transcribe the story to this blog, I had fine-tuned a few parts to make it clearer as to the story i wanted to tell. <\/em><\/p>\n

Earlier we learned that the each time a storyteller retells a story, it takes on apart of them too. After this lesson, I also learned that the listeners too change the story. Oral storytelling allows them to react and interact, whether it is with words or just facial expressions. They too change the story the next time it is retold. <\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many, many years ago,the land of the people was a different place. There was laughter and tears, happiness and joy, love and hate. For since the start of time there was good and bad. It was a perfect world and the witch people kept that balance in perfection. The witch people were the Guardians since […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38420,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ourstory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ourstory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ourstory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ourstory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38420"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ourstory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ourstory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ourstory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27\/revisions\/41"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ourstory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ourstory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ourstory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}