Roadwork
An impossible task is set before me. I stare at it. It stares at me tauntingly, and I know I will fail if I try. What is the task? Good question. Explaining it is part of the problem. Let me see . . . No, no. I can’t. I can’t explain the task. Nothing I say will show you my anxiety or how hard it is. So I will have to talk about something else, something like it, and hopefully it might help you to understand.
I love to travel. I go to many places, several times a year, to help with the vexation. I won’t bore you with the travel details. There’s only one memory that stands out to me right now, anyway.
There was a sizeable stretch of wilderness between two cities, in a country I was visiting. Somewhere on the road, I came to two workers. One man was tearing up pieces of the road, the other laying down new pieces.
“Doing some patchwork?” I said as nearly as I could in their language.
“We’re always fixing this road,” said one man.
“Does it get used much?”
“No, not much.”
“It gets damaged by weather or wildlife?” I asked.
“No,” said the one doing repairs. “I have to keep repairing the road, because he keeps tearing it up.”
“Well, why don’t you tell him to stop?”
“He can’t stop, of course.”
“Why not?”
The other man set aside his pickaxe after extracting a good-sized slab. “If I ever stop breaking the road, then he will never fix it.”
“So stop breaking the road and he won’t have to.”
“That’s just it. He’ll never fix it if I don’t break it.”
“But you’re not getting anywhere. Roads are supposed to get you places. You don’t tear up something good to fix it if it’s not broken.”
“Exactly,” they both said at once, and went back to work.
Perplexed, I shook my head and walked away.
