The Vale Trilogy

Part 2: The Vale Of Tears

When we speak of the vale of tears, we are referring to this world viewed as a place of sadness, sickness and helplessness. It's a tearful, woeful world we live in. Imagine we are the world, sporting no smile, just showing a drab, washed-out, sour face with brow furrowed. No pep, no glow, no spirit. It's pathetic, distressing, deplorable.

Our world is in a pretty bad shape. Man and nature ravage it. Misfortunes plague it. Wars, chaos, calamities, sufferings, depressions beset us. Armed conflicts erupt among nations. Bombs go off in crowded localities. Hurricanes rip across crowded areas. Sickness breaks out worldwide. Famine hits poor countries. There's not a day when something nasty is not happening.

We live in unending troubles, problems and sorrows. We live in constant terror, threats and uncertainties. There's the grim, ugly, cursed side of life that we have to face. There's the miserable, unbearable, crushing burden that we have to carry. The world recoils under these "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune."

Our stint here on earth is marked by a lot of hardships. It's a wretchedness that sentences us to hard life, hard times and hard labor. All the rough tumbles, tough breaks and hard knocks are out to get us. It's a dog's life we lead. The times are bad and sad and mad. Things go bust. Hard luck hounds us. A fall here, a shock there. Stormy weather here, sorry plight there. It's unfortunate that things just cannot sync. Even as we struggle with our personal difficulties, we have to contend with nature's wrath and man's madness. We bear witness to the paths of destruction left by tsunamis, floods, earthquakes, typhoons, tornadoes, erupting volcanoes. We are wrung with problems of epidemics, the weather and environment, of the cosmos and the elements. We just cannot escape from these catastrophic and phenomenal disturbances. We bear witness also to man's bestiality to men as seen in the unleashing of all forms of evil, cruelty and insanity through the demon in us. It's unimaginable that man is fiendishly willing to carry out genocide, killings, terror bombings, chemical/germ warfare, death tortures, etc.

Hitler, the lunatic Jew-terminator; Nero, the weeping city-burner; Herod, the cringing baby-slayer; and their modern-time counterparts perfectly typify the mad, cruel, and sick disciples of the dark side. In this respect, I would love Darth Vader.

There is also man's rape of his own mother planet. He scalps the forest clean of green. This is just one of his many wanton plunders and destruction of our natural resources. Add to that the ecological pollution of the waters, atmosphere and terra firma. Everything is laid waste by man on earth.

Man will always be imperfect. That is why we are helpless with paradoxes, differences and complexities. We are in discord, in deficiency, in disarray. Everything that is wrong, mean and messy is there. We build a big house but less of a home. We grunt, we sigh, we swear at the world. Poor world, it's truly the vale of tears.

Man can never have a perfect world. It's like a home that we are not attending to. Though it is ravished by nature, there is nothing wrong with it. Just consider catastrophes as cancers affecting it as an object, as in our body.

The actual problem is us, because we fail to make it livable. It's us making those adverse circumstances. It's us creating those woes and throes. It's us messing up things. The real reason that the world is being described as the vale of tears is because it is feeling sorry for us. Pity yourself.