Once upon a time, there was a traveler who fell into a deep valley. The air was heavy, and his body felt like stone. He could still move, but barely. He sat like a frightened, tired animal, unsure how to climb out.
Many villagers saw him and tried to help in the ways they knew. Some built fences around him, thinking safety meant distance. Others prescribed rules and routines, believing structure would heal him. Their intentions were good, but their help often felt mechanical, as if they were treating a broken tool instead of a weary human.
And yet, two small moments changed everything.
One villager sat down beside him in silence. No fixing, no explaining. Just warmth. Another showed him a curious trick — a bicycle that turned backwards, proving the mind could re-learn. The traveler realized: change was possible.
That was the paradigm shift.
Later, one of his older brothers asked him: “But what’s the better option?” The traveler couldn’t hand him a neat answer. The truth was harder: the better option wasn’t a single road. It was a way of seeing.
He had come to believe that depression wasn’t a brokenness but a dark recalibration, a night of the soul that could unlock new strength — if given patience and presence. The real medicine was a shift in perception, paired with the body’s chance to reset.
And here’s the part that softened his heart: everyone in the village had been changed by that valley, not just him. Their nervous systems bore the marks of that time too. He didn’t see himself as the cause of their suffering, nor them as the cause of his. The sun is not more moral than the earth, nor the comet less moral than the sun. Things move, collide, and change. That’s the nature of the universe.
So instead of hiding the path he had stumbled through, the traveler chose to mark it. Not as the perfect trail, but as a visible one. For his children, for other wanderers, for anyone who might one day fall into a valley and need proof that a way out — or a way through — exists.
That is why he says, with some lightness now:
“Houston, we had an attitude. But now — Houston, we have a paradigm shift.”
⛩️🌿
