world · Day 165 · Week 24
The Boy Who Held the Swan
Week twenty-four is when your hands begin a new kind of work — they cradle without thinking. The story of the young Siddhartha is for the protective instinct that has already woken inside you.
The one who saves a life owns more than the one who takes one.
In the gardens of the palace of Kapilavastu, where the marble paths ran between pools of pink lotus, two young cousins were running.
The older boy, Siddhartha, was perhaps eight years old. His hair was very dark and his eyes were the kind of grey that grew greener in soft light. He ran lightly, the way a deer runs.