Asylum

Visiting an asylum can be a penetrating experience. To listen to the different stories that pushed these people to an unrelenting wall. The prolific Zen teacher, Thich Nhat Hahn, made this remark “to love, without knowing how to love, wounds the person we love.” And this asylum reeked of the wounds left behind because of love.

They were left behind without being allowed to understand what happened and even why. Those who did not care left behind an emotional trauma that marred the psyche of the despondent forever. All they were given in cruel parting was ready-made cliches, glib answers and a leprous distance to justify the exercise of toxicity on the vulnerable. The broken and lost were left with the single choice of only functioning on autopilot. They have not "moved on" but they are forever frozen. In that frozen state only one thing remains like a painting on wall that never changes - "all the bridges have been burnt." And this is the only painting that remains, in a wall that is fully blank and grey. And in a room that has no windows, where no voices can be heard. Ever.

If they live would they have anyone to tell the tale? And when they die, would they ever have lived?