One Picture And One Story Week #85

Myself @aspiya From #Bangladesh

Greetings Splendid Individuals

Today I am going to participate in the contest "One Picture and One Story Week #85" held by @suboohi. I find it endlessly interesting how a single picture can contain so many emotions, so many truths and hidden stories and in this week’s image, I could not help but feel spoken to on a deep level. I saw it instantly, and a great rush of thoughts overcame me all speaking of real life and the hard truths we're so often confronted with on our way.

^{The picture created by Canva}

This photo tells a thousand truths that can never be spoken.

My first reaction, when I first looked at it, was this strange kind of weight in the heart. Here’s a guy going up a ladder ascending, perhaps for his family or his dreams or, who knows, just to make himself proud that he can reach high. He totes a briefcase packed with duties, ambition and optimism. He earned every bit of it with his long nights and sacrifices.

But look closer right below him is another man. Wearing the same suit, of the same world. Only he’s not climbing. He’s holding an axe. Not to build, but to destroy. What he has his eye on is the fact that the fellow up the ladder is the first man up the ladder.

It’s really one of those that hit me hard this is not just a photograph. It’s reality. It happens in offices and it happens among friends and sometimes even among family. Sometimes the ones that are smile wit you is the first to watch you fall. They just cannot stand to see others rise faster, further, and brighter than they are. They don’t climb their own ladder, they break yours.

Why does the success of someone else have to feel like our failure?

I have also encountered this in my journey. Those I placed trust in became silent enemies. I have felt the ladder sway beneath me not because the ladder was unstable, but because he was pushing it from below. It hurts. But it also teaches. It’s how you learn who’s really there for you and who’s just sticking around to scope out your success and plot sabotage.

This photo makes me think about how life isn’t completely about the climbing it’s about being present. It’s about having enough guts to hang on, when everyone else does their best to bring you down. It about understands that if you take a ladder and saw it in half; you build a new ladder taller, stronger, higher that cannot be broken.

And perhaps, most of all let’s choose to be the kind of person who holds the ladder for others, not the kind that tries to cut it. For rising together is always more powerful than rising alone.