Dearest friends,
I am recently feeling like a protagonist in a written work of popular Japanese fiction. I am not aware of any wells in my proximity, so finding a dry one would be asking too much. Instead, I will tell you a brief story about Yubtumbo, the flattener.
Yubtumbo was the sixteenth son of a seventh son, and thus, by the divine laws of such things, he was shipped to a monkery for proper training. Sweat-slicked from the labor, his mother had hardly seen his face before he was swaddled, bundled up, and given over to the care of the nurse who would accompany him to the mountain-top palace of the holy. Weaned quickly, he was separated from the nurse at the earliest opportunity and devoted wholly to the monks there.
Even as a young child, he excelled in all his lessons. His treatments of history were insightful and eloquent. Mathematics came easily to him. During discussion, his contributions were concise and biting; other students were careful not to inadvertently profess an opinion counter to Yubtumbo's. The respect of his peers and superiors, of everyone who met him, came easily, despite his peculiar behavior.
Yubtumbo refused to sit, or stand, or even raise his head. Remaining how he had been placed by his nurse as an infant, face up on his back, he moved everywhere like a snake. Every movement he made slowly, with great effort, but without changing his altitude at all.
Because, ultimately, Yubtumbo, the flattener, hated changes in altitude. Famously guarded about his reasons, Yubtumbo avoided all discussions about his inclination toward planarity. Once, though, a new student at the monkery asked Yubtumbo, "Yubtumbo, your motivation puzzles me. Why do you move as you do? Why avoid moving up or down when it seems so much trouble to do so? Are you not simply trading one type of effort for another?" Yubtumbo paused a moment, it is said, before chuckling sincerely and responding, "Yes, my friend, I understand your concern. And yes, dear boy, you have hit the heart of it. Trades, though, are not as simple as you say. They are a series of shared choices, negotiated between two or more parties for the sake of advancing each participant in some way. These choices are informed by the preferences of the parties, which in turn are informed by bias, evidence, judgment, and imagination. Perhaps the day will come when you will understand my preferences, and the parties with whom I am negotiating." Yubtumbo smiled again, and ended the discussion with a distant, unwavering gaze.
He passed many happy years there, prostrate in the monkery, until one day, the sixteenth day of the seventh month, he started floating up, up, up. His gaunt shape was first a line against the sky, and then a dot, and then a speck, and then he was gone. And so it was that Yubtumbo, the flattener, the great leveler, passed into the heavens. All those he left behind there in the monkery gave him daily sacrifices of altitude. And Yubtumbo was pleased. When the monks thereafter needed help with obstacles, physical or metaphorical, they called upon their friend Yubtumbo to flatten the paths before them, and he did.
good night friends,
walter