A good read

It doesn't matter if you can read, all that counts is that you keep up appearances. Just open a book and look at the letters carefully. That's all. I've told you that more than once, so why are you making it so incredibly difficult? Just see the letters dancing before your eyes as little drawings, figures partying and conveying a message. If you look closely, you might discover a few that are the same and who knows you even might learn how to write one day.

He had never learned to read and had grown up keeping up appearances. Terrible? Unfair? What did it matter, he knew how to do his shopping, learned plenty of tricks by copying others to live a full life and knew how to recognize the value of the different notes It had only been difficult once when the government started printing different billets, but he had overcome that problem too because he had made a game out of recognizing it with the neighbourhood children (guess what it is).

He thought back with nostalgia to the time of his youth. He had seen the world in black and white and avoided what could have gotten him into trouble. He had certainly not been a daredevil and when he heard his elderly table companions recount the most sensational things they had undertaken he felt himself becoming increasingly empty inside.
What had he done with his life other than adapt to society always watching his step and especially remaining silent?
This time he also kept his mouth shut and as the conversation flared up he quietly went to his room to look for the last time at the photo that had been taken in his youth.

Long-forgotten thoughts surfaced but there was not a single wish among them. He tried to remember if this had ever been the case. Could the lack of wishes be the reason he'd never undertaken anything? Was it necessary to be someone that everyone would remember? Were there people who thought that this was important?
His thoughts went back to the national history classes where he learned about how his ancestors were buried together in a dolmen. Would they have ever felt like him, that void inside? Did they ever waste a thought about leading a useless life? It seemed unlikely.

As he went to bed he fell asleep with a smile. One thing he knew for sure. His life had had as much purpose as that of all the millions of people who had ever inhabited the earth. It was good to realize that life doesn't have to have meaning and that this is an idea instilled in him by the same society that always forced him to sit at the table with a book to give the appearance of an educated person valuable to society.

#pic1000 - @freewritehouse

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