The Allegory of Jignesh

There was a town in a valley where a curious boy lived. The town was full of regular, ordinary people. They lived their life for mirth as children do. Their thoughts were shallow and glory was unknown to them. The Curious Boy was named Jignesh. When he was young, he partook in societies values, but as he grew he became bored. The nothingness of the town begged him to find better entertainment, so he began a journey up the mountain. 

His curiosity grew as he discovered more new things and realized how little his fellows thought or felt. He claimed to the peak and found new enlightenment. He saw God. He found wisdom. And he discovered his own divinity. He dwelt on the mountain for many days. He walked along the razor peaks and went to those places where trees could no longer grow. He found caves and waterfalls, and he even found the ruins of an old civilization. It was a magnificent city once thriving on this mountain. He found artifacts there from a bygone age. He found manuscripts there that told the stories of the great men who built the city and their thoughts and feelings and values. Jignesh learned of a higher better culture than the petty valley people. As he acquainted himself with the dead, Jignesh grew disconsolate. There was no company on the mountain anymore.

As Jignesh went from boy to man, he realized that he must have a tribe, and a wife, and a family. But there were no people on the mountain. So the boy, in desperation, went down from the mountain. He passed his old discoveries and his sacred places. He went down into the firs and into the leaves and into the valley. He found many people there. The children he knew long ago had grown into adults, they were not the foolish children they once were but had metamorphosed into silly adults. They were men and woman who now had responsibilities and who had to work for a living and learn how to extract food from the valley’s ground, but they still managed to be petty still. A child wanders around in search for pleasure, while an adult is forced to work but still seeks the nonsense of a child’s life. 

At first, Jignesh was happy to have company and people to talk to. He sincerely enjoyed their human company. But they were a shallow lot, and his journey up the mountain had changed his eyes and his should so that he could not be content with the pettiness of his new friends. He left the village a second time and journeyed up the mountain to where the city of the dead lay. No one met him as he entered the crumbling place. He went to the books he had found and discovered that these ancient people were the ancestors of the valley dwellers. Jignesh cried. Why did the people abandon this place? He imagined that great teachers and orators and sophists had convinced the people to leave the mountain and journey to the shallow places of the world and that the great mountain city had been killed by them. 

Jignesh went back down the mountain, and continued to dwell among the valley culture. He built a house there and raised a family. He would go back up the mountain from time to time, but none ever went with him. After long years he died. He always wished that he could have dwelt in a past age where the mountain kingdom was thriving, for no one understood the man. He pretended to be as shallow as the people, but his face hid deep understanding and wisdom he obtained from God on the mountain. He always wondered throughout his life: is it better to live on the mountain enlightened but isolated, or to live in the valley accompanied but disgusted? Jignesh died without his answer.