Isn’t life a boomerang?

Often times, I hear people use the phrase “what goes around comes around” or “what goes up must surely come down.” Both phrases, I must confess, I unequivocally agree with. As a matter of fact, Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese sea captain and his crew proved the first statement definitively when they circled round the globe on a three-year voyage from 1519-1522. They returned to the exact point they began from without encountering any abrupt end. This, among several other works, later formed the foundation on which the fact that the earth is a spherical body was established. In basic physics, the law of gravity backs up the second phrase.

Today, however, my mission is to prove both statements using a real life situation and not physics or geography. I would like to share with you an apocryphal story, didactic and equally very limpid. It was told to me as a little girl. In the remote past, along the ancient coastal area lived a simple fisherman, his wife and son. Their life was austere but beautiful, peaceful and enviable.

The fisherman lived in an isolated hut in the middle of the forest with his family and every fishing morning, at dawn, along with his little boy, he would set out with his boat to spread his fishing net.  The catch would be collected the next day, a market day according to their itinerary, and his wife would take part of the fish to the market for sale. And so was their routine until doom struck. The fisherman and his little boy left for the river as usual on a morning but never returned. Joy and peace ceased in the little, isolated hut as a distraught wife and mother wailed incessantly for her missing child. Days turned into nights, nights into fortnights, years went by, but the fisherman and his little boy where nowhere to be found!

But the sad and lonely woman in the isolated hut didn’t give up. Somewhere deep inside her, she had the fleeting assurance that her son and husband were still alive and would come back to her some day. She stopped weeping and dedicated her life to doing good. Feeding and sheltering weary travelers who got lost in the forest.

On a sunny day, she stumbled on two young but ragged looking strangers, weak and feeble from the perils of journeying. The younger looking one seemed to have a deep cut on his left feet. He had walked into a trap in the forest and was bleeding profusely. She immediately helped them to her hut where she tended to the wounds, fed them with a nourishing fish meal and gave them a warm place to spend the night. The next morning, they decided to continue their journey but she persuaded them to tarry till the wound healed completely. They stayed with her for a few days and for the first time in over seven years, her hut lost its lingering languidity. They bade her farewell and left her with a promise to return her kindness. Did they keep their promise?

One cool dusk, while sitting in front of her hut and listening to the birds chirp, a vaguely familiar figure emerged from the horizon. Joy leaped on her inside, the type she had felt seven years ago before the disappearance of her husband and son. Shortly after, a younger figure emerged. Emotions welled up inside her and erupted into excited shrieking the instant they closed up on her, it was her missing son and husband.

That evening, the sun didn’t set at her hut for it was perpetually lit up with happiness. They told their story after a lavish meal. They had been captured by slave traders and sold into slavery in a faraway kingdom where they had been serving for over seven years until something happened.

The prince and heir to the throne went hunting with only his personal guard and didn’t return for weeks. The palace mourned, as it was rumoured around the kingdom that he had fallen prey to a ferocious wild beast. Providence shined on the palace and he returned to tell a tale of abduction, escape and, finally, help from a poor lonely woman in an isolated hut. The teenage boy was working at the prince’s chambers one night when he began to hum a tune. The song was familiar and great perturbation hit the prince; he tried desperately to recall where he first heard the tune but to no avail. Another night, the same incident occurred but, this time, the prince summoned the slave boy and interrogated him.

The boy confirmed it was his mother’s lullaby. The one she used in singing him to sleep as a little boy. Immediately, the scales fell off the prince’s eye. It was the same tune the lonely woman hummed every night. He asked her about it but all she had told him was “it was a happy song before my grave loss, now it is a song of sadness.”

The boy’s father was sent for and he narrated how they got into slavery at the palace. The prince ordered their release and sent an escort along with them to ensure their safety. He did not forget the promise he made to an angel. What goes around truly comes around. Doesn’t it?