Make Your Soul Grow

We feed our bodies to make them grow, and our brains so that we can live life to the full. We need to look into our hearts, fill our souls and make them grow. What then is a soul?

It is the tug at your heart when you witness pain, the joy that a small child's laughter can bring. Your soul can take flight, sending you soaring above the world, marvelling at the beauty that exists everywhere. It can be overfed, plunging you into adventures that scare you. Urging you on when you want to give up. It can show you the way home, help you to make a place, a space, your home. It can help you pick the perfect puppy from the pound and grow to bursting point when it nuzzles your neck and falls asleep in your arms.

What if you find yourself in an unsafe situation? A desolation, a wilderness where people once lived, where children played, and dogs bounded past. Now it is just rubble and dust, the occasional toy or piece of clothing the only clue that humans once called it home. There are no parks, no trees, but in what had once been someone's garden, an oasis of calm in a bustling city, one tiny flower blooms. Just one, but its smiling yellow face is enough to awaken your soul and spread warmth throughout your body. You kneel down, taking care not to crush the delicate bloom. The light breeze makes the flower sway as though it is acknowledging your presence. It is the only living thing in this godforsaken city. The people who survived the man-made Armageddon and genocide inflicted here are scattered, displaced, their souls struggling to find peace, to find home.

Soon, the bulldozers will arrive, flattening everything, rebuilding. But not for the people. It is intended to be a rich man's playground. You close your eyes and feel your soul start to slowly bleed out as you digest the enormity of this heinous crime against humanity. You find a pot in the rubble, use your hands to fill it with dirt, and transplant the tiny flower. You cannot leave it there to die, to be trampled underfoot.

You climb a hill on the edge of the city and replant the flower where it can watch all the comings and goings, and maybe touch the souls of some of the people who will come.