At the beginning of my story Bill and Will were the same age and lived happily together in a house called 'William'. William had three windows: one which everybody could see, one which only Bill and Will knew really well and one which only Will knew about. The first was a perfectly ordinary window through which Bill and Will saw everything outside as perfectly ordinary everything, and which made William look as perfectly ordinary as perfectly ordinary everything would have it seem. The second window had special attributes, rather like those of an X-ray, and through it Bill and Will looked through apparently ordinary everything at what they thought apparently ordinary everything was really like inside. The third was an X-traordinary window which looked out on an X-traordinary world known only to Will, and which Will found impossible to describe in ordinary words - especially since it was always changing in a way which seemed entirely magical.
"It's like....it's like it must be at the very bottom of the very deepest sea", he would cry excitedly to Bill. "Or at the very top of the very very highest star".
For how could Will describe how Time and Space just stopped? How non-shapes and non-forms danced madly round and round and into each other, swirling whirling light and colour in sheer sheer exhilaration? How could he describe how everything was so perfectly just as it had always been, so incessantly changing, so wonderful, so fresh, so joyous, so mysterious, so impudent, so, so, oh so everything ? How could he? He was only a child after all.
"It's like a kaleidoscope", he shouted, the first time he tried one. "Only it does it not only with colour, but also with music...and with words and with ideas and with....and with everything ".
So Bill would laugh - but kindly - and he would share in Will's joy. Still, he couldn't share Will's way of seeing things. He was a very down-to-earth, matter-of-fact, solid boy, you see, and couldn't really believe in Will's preposterous fantasies. But as long as he and Will were the same age together, it was fun to pretend and play along. And he and Will got along just fine.
Little by little, however, time passed, and with time things began to change in a way completely different from the way they changed in Will's world. William grew in size, as all lived-in houses grow little by little. And as Bill grew too, he started to realise that William needed looking after, and to wonder how best it could be done. And the more he wondered, the less time he had to think about anything else. But while he thought, he looked out of the second window and started to catch glimpses of other houses with X-ray windows like his. And he naturally felt an urge to know what was inside them better. Since looking after William took up so much of his time, however, he just as naturally found very little left over to look as closely as he might have wished to, especially when the persons inside seemed from his point of view so different from himself.
Because, of course, persons with X-ray windows, unlike those with perfectly ordinary windows, seemed to each other to be very different from each other, and tended to see differences as 'better' or 'worse' rather than merely 'different'. So as Bill strove to become more and more like those who seemed 'better' to him, and to behave according to their 'better' outsides too, he became more and more annoyed by the differences of those who grew increasingly 'worse'. Especially when their behaviour made looking after William so much more complicated and tiring. And as his annoyance grew, his curiosity diminished, and with his curiosity, so did his amiability.
"As if looking after William were not already so complicated", he often complained to Will. And Will would smile absently and nod vaguely:
"Yes, yes, of course. It can't be much fun for you."
And he would turn at once to his third window again. It was almost as if, incredible though it might appear - for, after all, William was just as much his home - almost as if William didn't matter much to Will. And to tell the truth, I don't think it did!
Will could see, perhaps, that worrying about William's needs didn't seem to make Bill any happier, and he still clung to the happiness they had known together before the worrying started. And perhaps because Will believed it was still possible and important to be happy, he couldn't share Bill's way of seeing things. He was a very other-worldly, dreamy boy, you see, but also very spirited, and couldn't really believe it was more important to be reasonable, when common-sense made the whole business of living itself seem so dull and so flat and so, so uninspiring. And when common-sense kept reminding him of William's needs, Will would feel dispirited and restless and sort of hemmed-in, and even found it difficult to breathe inside William for very long. So he loved to fling his third window wide wide open and inhale long and deep.
And while he breathed, Will would pretend William was not so much his home as a guest house in which he could occasionally snatch a bite or two, or take a nap when absolutely necessary, in-between the more invigorating business of popping in and out of other people's houses through his third window. Because Will, you see, loved playing at make-believe, and since he was very curious, loved to pretend he sometimes lived in other houses apart from William, no matter how grimy or squalid, or sordid or wicked, or drab or gray, or mean or dingy, or merely uninteresting or uninviting the houses appeared on the outside. And though he didn't always enjoy his experiences, he just couldn't resist the fun of make-believe visiting and of trying to figure out what all sorts of houses really looked like from inside-out rather than outside-in. It was so much easier to look around that way. Rather than up or down, that is, which he had tried, of course, but had given up almost immediately. Why, it had made it so much more tiring and complicated to see what was right before his very eyes. And though he didn't always enjoy his experiences, he was always cheerful and full of life when he made-believe. Which is as he liked to be, and as he would have liked everybody to be. Including Bill.
So, whenever Bill looked especially tired or glum, Will would try to share his experiences with him. Just to cheer him up. Which seemed to irk Bill instead. Until Will started to wonder if, after all, though he didn't seem very happy, Bill just had a different way of being happy; and if his way were not itself a game of make-believe. Only that Bill pretended looking after William was more important than anything else.
"That's what it must be", he smiled happily at Bill. "We're just playing different pretend games, and it would be so much more fun for both of us if we shared them. I'll tell you what - you come and sit by my window with me one day, and we'll go visiting together. And then, on the following day, we'll both stay at home and look after William. What do you think of that"?
"Oh Will, Will! You and your pretend games!" - and Bill would shake his head in exasperation. "I'm not playing any game at all. I've no time for games. And I have no time to listen to your idle chatter, either. Why don't you do something worthwhile, instead of game-playing all the time?"
"But I don't find what you think worthwhile any fun", Will would argue back. "Not unless we're playing at it together just like it were any other pretend game. And it isn't fair anyway to try to get me to play your...whatever it is you call it. Not when you're not prepared to try my whatever-it-is as well".
"Playing games! Having fun! You drive me mad! Why don't you grow up!"
So Will sat at his third window popping into other houses to see what growing-up was like. And he found that grown-ups seemed to see eye-to-eye with Bill about the importance of their houses, even if they differed in their ways of looking after them. They all agreed, for example, that it was absolutely essential for their houses to be, first of all, safe; and, secondly, comfortable. But whereas some seemed content with stopping there, a great many went on to adorn their houses with odds and ends which, to Will at least, seemed not only absolutely superfluous, but even cumbersome. Apart from the fact that they obstructed the views from their windows and prevented the light from getting in properly, of course. But when they went so far as to strip the houses of others in order to further embellish their own, Will just stood and gaped in disbelief.
"I'm really going too far this time," he gasped. "However did I come to make such an absurd thing up!"
It is true that a few of the grown-ups Will saw were so far removed from being infected by this general madness that they were even prepared to sacrifice the safety and comfort of their own houses in order to safeguard those of others. And Will was moved to admiration of their generosity, especially since he could see that the safety, at least, of their own houses was of such real importance to them. So he felt happy that Bill belonged with the few rather than the many. But he was saddened to see that both the many and the few shared a common habit of bolting their doors and securing their windows against other grown-ups.
"I suppose it's to protect the insides of their houses from intruders," Will mused. "Just in case they might also be would-be invaders. But as for a would-be visitor like me - I've never found it too difficult to get in and out up to now. It won't be that easy anymore if I grow up too!"
That is why Will felt he couldn't stretch himself up far enough to see eye-to-eye with grown-ups for very long. Especially since, no matter what direction he looked in from the grown-up point of view, all he could see was houses, houses, houses. And locked, bolted, entirely shut-up houses at that! What's more, grown-ups didn't seem to have much fun even when doing things their own way, or to be at all happy most of the time.
"And no wonder", Will thought, "Why, even the most generous amongst them seem to prefer locking themselves up in their own houses when it's so much more fun to get out. Or locking themselves out of other people's houses, when it's so much more fun to get in".
So Will's simple logic still couldn't understand why he should of his own free will grow more, rather than less, attached to William at the expense of his happiness. Or grow to believe the grown-up 'other' world, in which he felt so lost, more real than his own. And he couldn't understand why it was necessary or desirable for anyone to grow up, if growing-up also meant growing house-bound and growing over-cautious and growing anxious or mistrustful or belligerent or bad-tempered, or simply unhappy.
Nevertheless, when he tried to argue his point of view with Bill, it didn't sound as convincing as when he thought it out all by himself. Perhaps it was because Bill's air of authority caused a niggling doubt somewhere inside Will to start him uncomfortably questioning:
"I don't feel I'm wrong. I don't think I think I'm wrong. Is it possible I am wrong?"
For, no matter how he tried, Will could not pretend he wasn't puzzled when Bill asked him outright:
"How about thinking of other people's happiness for a change?"
"But I do!" And Will would frown in concentration. "You know I want everybody to be happy".
"Of course I know! But what's the use of wanting something, no matter how badly, if you're not prepared to do something about it?"
So Will would try to convince himself of the importance of growing up and growing responsible for the happiness of others rather than his own. He wished it could have been 'as well' as his own. But no matter how he tried, Will could not pretend he was happy acting grown-up. So he would tighten his lips with determination and effort and do lots of good things - like looking after the needs of William for Bill's sake. And he would grow rigid and peevish and brittle and waspish. And also 'up' a little as a result. Which should have made Bill happier. But it didn't seem to, much. And of course this puzzled Will still further. Because, of course again, Will didn't realise that, though he was popping into Bill's way of looking at things, he still couldn't see them in exactly the same way - not as long as it was his own eyes he continued to look through! And he didn't realise that, for the same reason, he and Bill couldn't speak things in the same way either - even when it came to what should have been a simple word like 'happiness'. For as Bill continued to grow, he came more and more to speak a language which not only added lots of difficult words to the simple ones he had once shared with Will, but also began to load with gravity ideas and meanings Will still loved to juggle with. And more and more, Bill's words and ideas continued to grow much too ponderous and weighty for the light-hearted Will to grasp with ease. But whether he was incapable of doing so, or merely disinclined to do it, I do not know.
I do know, however, that at this particular point in my story, as Will returned in discouragement to his third window, he certainly did not understand the 'why' behind Bill's growing irritability. He was not able to realise the growing intensity of Bill's indignant anguish at the harsh, inexorable demands of the stark reality he saw from the second window.
For Bill saw men compelled to die of hunger or of pain, and saw men struggle to survive in dignity, or to survive at all. And Bill saw men intent on crushing other men and bent on thwarting or on foiling all their struggles. And he saw men warped by ennui or hardship or pressure or dishonesty or betrayal, and overcome by cruel fate or ruthless exploitation. And Bill saw men too blinded by self-interest to acknowledge the need for self-denial, self-sacrifice or self-control. Or just too weak to stand the strain of what they could not bear to see. And Bill felt within himself the strength, the purpose, the courage and the moral rectitude to help mankind survive, and to survive in dignity. And he was filled with rigorous resolve to protect the weak and needy. As also the fragile naivety of such as Will. So he stood upright and DID. For Bill too wanted Will to be happy, and dreaded thinking what would become of him in the world he saw, if he himself were not always around to protect him. Which is why he wanted Will to grow up.
�How can you grapple with, let alone overcome, life�s very real problems if all you do is escape from them?� he would insist.
�But from my point of view,� Will would persist obstinately, �they don�t seem like very real problems at all. You just can�t understand that.�
�Can�t I? Can�t I just? Perhaps I can see things even more clearly than you, even from your own point of view! Perhaps I can see that the world you escape to is very beautiful and very happy and very harmonious, but about as effectual in practical terms as a pretty, empty bubble of colourful air. And do you think I wouldn�t rather be blowing bubbles in a carefree manner like you, wishing everybody were as happy and pleasant as I? Do you think I enjoy working as hard as I do? Of course I know yours is a happier world � it�s easy to be light-hearted when you have no burdens to bear. But how, how, how is even the most beautifully coloured of your idealistic bubbles ever going to fill empty mouths? Or oppose injustice? Or relieve pain? They�re just made of air � beautiful, happy air!�
And because Bill realised that the nature of man could never change, he strove to convert his dreams of a juster world into action by supplying them with all the dynamic energy he could muster. For how, how, how, no matter how he yearned to rest his spirit, could he ignore the actual world with its hunger, injustice and pain when he knew that, unlike Will, he possessed the insight and the force to act? So Bill knew he was bound to bear the burden of his responsibilities no matter how weighty, even as he knew that the graver his responsibilities grew, the greater would grow the onus of his suffering in the face of adversity, discouragement, obstacle and even calumny. And Bill never wavered in his resolve. But his sorely-belaboured spirit would sometimes wearily crave assurance and encouragement, and so he turned to Will with faith and love for understanding and security and warmth and cheer. And also perhaps for the appreciation which a grudging world offered only stintingly or not at all.
Can you imagine, therefore, how Bill felt when Will seemed to him to evince no particular interest, no particular sensibility, acknowledgement, approval or even due respect for his suffering, his exceptional qualities or the very real value of his growing achievements? And can you imagine his incredulity when Will�s attitude seemed to him to imply some secret, smug and smiling consciousness of far-away visions superior to Bill�s own? Can you imagine Bill struggling with super-human patience against the mounting bitterness of his solitude? Or exerting himself to look with tolerance upon what he felt was merely capricious and childish wilfulness? And can you imagine him trying to excuse the wilfulness as the short-sighted, self-deceptive, self-justifying inability of the weak-willed to honestly face up to its own inaptitude? But struggle as he might for even greater magnanimity, Bill could not stop his growing bitterness from gradually interpreting Will�s dissociation as disloyalty, his contrariety as animosity, his independence as defiance, his autonomy as provocation, and his too too obvious under-estimation of Bill�s worth as deliberate and even malicious desire to wound. And because he had always believed in Will�s love, Bill felt rejected and unappreciated and cheated beyond endurance of what he had held most dear. And he was very hurt.
But Will sensed Bill�s hurt and divined its cause. And though he felt he couldn�t understand Bill�s difference, as Bill couldn�t understand his own need to be different, he felt the hurt as his own and was ashamed. Because he too loved Bill. And since he couldn�t feel entirely happy as long as his need hurt Bill, he tried again to understand what it was that made looking after William and growing-up so important. And so he started to look more often out of the second window himself.
What Will saw, however, instead of making him indignant, only bewildered and perplexed him, and soon made him feel increasingly sad and lonely. For Will saw men compelled to drudge and toil, toil and drudge, day in, day out, day out, day in; and felt the soil of both their hearts and spirits freeze with bleakness. And Will saw men rise up in hope waving banners of Justice; and felt them flee towards self-destruction - or driven to compel men to toil and drudge, drudge and toil, day in, day out, day out, day in.
And he saw progress, yes, cutting its confident, impersonal way through darkened regions of trembling human tenderness waiting, as it had waited since the beginning of time, for flickers of the light, the warmth and the gentle, healing touch of intimate awareness. He experienced great distress and agitation as he watched the goodness, innocence, dignity and joy of humanity slowly dissected, infected, and corrupted � not only by pain or hunger or evil or indifference, but also by loneliness and misery and tedium and frustration. As also by too rigid righteousness and the blind and violent need to rid the world of suffering.
Till Will felt the suffering and the need constrict and crack his heart even as he expanded with a desperate apprehension of the futility of effort, of tension, of revolt � both within and with his own futile caring. And though he was now growing up quite fast, Will still could not understand. For as he tried harder and harder to look more and more closely and without exclusion at everything he saw, opening himself wide to receive every conceivable otherness he learnt about, Will found each otherness alone in turn, and felt himself go wearily to pieces under the heavy load of his own guilty implication in what he saw. And since Bill was more often than not too busy or pre-occupied to help sort him out, Will got lonelier and lonelier and lonelier.
So Will began to try his own best to piece the bits of himself together and to stop caring. And he tried his best to grow up even more quickly and to learn how to sneer himself at all those who sneered at each other through their strongly fortified second windows; and could not, therefore, see how different he, Will, was from all those who were really no different from each other. And because he was so broken and disheartened, Will found it possible to analyze and fragmentize and categorize and generally comparti-mentalize, viz:
(i) their common pre-occupation with houses, especially their own;
(ii) their common unwillingness to see what there was to see through each other�s windows;
(iii) their common contempt for the inferiority of what they were not inclined or disposed to see;
(iv) their common anxiety to safeguard the security of their superiority.
And as Will absorbed the pre-occupation and the unwillingness, the contempt and the anxiety, he found himself sharing their common frustration and their common fear, as also their common reluctance to search more deeply behind their superior knowledge for a deeper and more intimate understanding of what they saw. And Will felt the great part of what he saw was evil. So he felt himself grow more and more fractionised, and more and more fractious, and more and more irascible and more and more aggressive. And he was not happy.
It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that more and more Will started to turn away from the second window to his own X-traordinary third window, and to try to dream himself into the limitless wonderland he saw there. But at first he sat like a bird with battered wings, too heavy-hearted to fly at all. And the brightness that he saw dazzled his eyes, filling him with longing but also with dread, because he did not trust his own ability to raise himself out of his heaviness. And, though he could not bear to return to the second window, he sometimes wished that he too, like Bill, could believe the third window was no more than make-believe. Because the restlessness inside himself to fly out of it pained him with the desire to sleep and dream forever. And yet he feared even the dream. So he grew apathetic and lethargic, and sat for days on end just looking out with unseeing eyes. Till one day his eyes became accustomed to the brightness, and began to pick out bits and pieces of the moving patterns he had once felt so familiar with. And his heart stirred and began to grow lighter and more hopeful. And he started to hope that perhaps, perhaps, one day he might be able to fly out after all.
So more and more he found himself on his own, without Bill. But also with a diminishing need of him or of any of those others he had seen through his second window. Until one day he didn�t need to try anymore. For he saw everything more and more clearly, and he felt himself growing lighter and lighter � and lighter. Till at last he knew he could fly. For on that non-day, Will no longer saw the world outside the third window. He no longer saw but was there! And as soon as he was there, Will found not only himself, but also Bill and every other in his own, and not only with-out, but onely and all-so with-in, where t(he)y had all-ways been. And at last Will comprehended what he had only apprehended through the second window. And he knew there need be no otherness, no opposition, no injustice, no futility, no loneliness and no need. And he also knew why.
Because the second window, you see, had only been able to look outwards at and through others. It could not, as could the third window, look inwards at and through oneself. It could not look beyond apparent difference to shared limitation, and beyond shared limitation to limitless love. But Will could. And Will understood even what he could never know. And because he understood, Will accepted, embracing all frailty, all fragility, without condemnation or censure or condescension or condition or question, and with the same respect, compassion, tenderness, veneration, wonder, warmth and smiling sympathy he felt for all existing things, including himself. For at the centre of himself, Will discovered what felt to him like the centre of infinity, around which spun a universe of ageless innocence, harmony and awareness such as the actual circumscribed world had never known. And as he entered into, dissolved and became at once every aloneness that had ever been and ever would be, Will annihilated all tension and conflict, all evil and guilt, all the torment, weariness and pain of mortal definiton, and was embraced by the All-Oneness of Being. And finding All-One was good, Will was happy.
The odd thing was, moreover, that when Bill summoned Will back to the complexity of William, Will seemed to have grown even younger than he had been before he started to look out of the second window more often. So that Bill suddenly seemed to be at least twice his age. And, what is even odder, you couldn�t really tell, especially if you looked close enough, whether he was a boy or a girl, after all. But Will didn�t mind very much when, as a result, Bill began to lord it over him. S/He still tried to speak about the X-traordinary window to Bill, but more and more, Bill�s laughter stopped being kind and grew even more derisive and altogether more cynical. So more and more Will stopped trying. But I must admit s/he felt a great sorrow, nevertheless, because s/he knew that s/he could not get Bill�s kind of person to believe in the existence of the third window; as those who looked out of only the first window of their houses found it difficult to believe in the second. S/he knew this as well as s/he knew that it was only from with-in that one could transform a world which neither imposition nor rejection nor anything or anyone with-out One-self could ever essentially change. That it was only through the third window that One cold look not only at or only through or only in, before or after; but also in-to, and also with-in and also also beyond. And though Will didn�t need to find causes or enjoyment in order to be happy as long as s/he could live within and beyond, s/he grieved from inside William because s/he could not X-ternalize what s/he saw into the world outside. As her understanding swelled and throbbed within him with the pain of unreleased fullness Will grieved from inside William because s/he could not share this happiness with Bill.
Only because s/he could not contain the immensity of such caring, therefore, Will would still try on rare occasions to persuade Bill:
�Please, Bill, please: just look once! You must, you must look once.�
�What do you mean, I must?� and Bill would grow forbidding and impatient. �I must? Why don�t you take a good look at yourself instead? Instead of finding excuses to keep on shirking your responsibilities?�
�But I want you so much to be happy�, Will would insist. �Because I love you so.�
�To be happy � to be happy! Will you ever change? How can I ever be anything when I always have so much to do? How can you expect me to indulge in the luxury of looking through illusory third windows when you�re always shifting the entire burden of William�s welfare onto my long-suffering shoulders? As for love love love �You love me? You�re incapable of loving anyone but yourself. You�re just selfish and insensitive and self-centred, that�s what you are!�
So Bill not only found it impossible to credit Will�s sentimental notions of possible joy in a world of pain, but because of the pain even found himself resenting the possibility that Will could actually experience such joy at all. �Oh yes, of course, � he scoffed, �Happiness, love, joy � just look at you. The ideal representation!�
And yet whenever Will, seemingly unaware of Bill�s very presence, moved in quiet absorption towards the third window, Bill felt even more vexed by a strange, elusive and disquieting sensation which his securely practical outlook on things in general just couldn�t explain away. And this he simply could not brook.
�As if it�s not enough that because of his refusal to co-operate I have to double my work and worries! As if it�s not enough that I get insults instead of thanks for it! Now he�s got to make me feel uncomfortable even when I can snatch a moment in which to relax. I just can�t take it anymore.�
So Bill withdrew further and further away from Will into himself, and gravitated even more and more inexorably towards the affirmative noise and bustle of his own kind of person. And more and more he started to feel ashamed of Will�s relentless presence and proximity inside William. And the tension inside William grew more and more intense, so that it was a wonder it didn�t blow up or wasn�t consumed altogether. Till Bill could really take no more, and burned with the searing need to shut Will up and out of William once and for all. And one day he succeeded in doing just that. Without even knowing that he had done it � since, of course, he didn�t believe it was there � Bill put up the shutters on the third window while Will was out idling away somewhere, and so Will couldn�t get back into William again. And do you think s/he would have wanted to at this stage? Or would ever have wanted to if it hadn�t been for Bill? The strange thing is, however, that as soon as this had happened, Bill never missed Will, or even remembered that s/he had ever been inside William at all. It was as if, while he�d grown bigger and bigger, Will had grown smaller and smaller, until now that Bill felt quite grown up, Will had altogether disappeared even from his memory.
And yet, at times, especially when he was alone and in a reflective mood, Bill had the odd and uneasy sensation that something was missing in the now well-ordered, well-organised well-being of William. Or not exactly missing as sort of �there� - but invisible. Something that gave Bill an uncanny, queasy feeling of being watched. And who knows if perhaps it wasn�t Will who was watching? Who knows if Will could not perhaps still see Bill from the vantage point of timelessness, where there is no need of windows? If Will could not, perhaps, look into Bill�s future and look on while, despite Bill�s hectic endeavours, William started to moulder and crumble and break off in bits and pieces, making Bill feel himself just as grey and used-up as his stale old house? Who knows whether, as Will watched him steadily growing lonelier and more disillusioned, more weary and more hopeless, he could not also perhaps see glimpses of the memory of little Will suddenly returning with unexpected nostalgia?
But since all this �who knowing� is only about Bill�s future in the actual world of Time, and since at the actual moment that time is still full of purpose and Will is outside William, I cannot tell you how the story will end. I can only tell you that I feel sure that if Bill ever wants Will back even before William finally falls on top of him, he too can perhaps come to believe in the third window. He can perhaps find and remove the shutters he himself has put up. And who knows! If Bill ever looks just once out of the third window, maybe he too will want to join Will in our never-ever land beyond time and space and difference. And they can both be eternally the same non-age again.
Perhaps even William will be able to rock with laughter and kick his heels at time and the actual world before Bill and Will decide together whether they want to put him down to rot, or to keep him young and happy with them forever. And who knows whether this wouldn�t have been possible even towards the middle of my story if Bill and Will had paid more attention to each other instead of too much or too little to William�s needs? And, above all, who knows what would have happened if both or either of them had paid more attention to William himself rather than his needs? Perhaps William has some other window neither of them, nor even I, know anything about. Perhaps William has lots of other windows. Perhaps, perhaps � or perhaps not! Who knows? Who can ever know? Can you?
