Discouragement

This is a story that the Peruvian writer Ciro Alegría collected in the communities surrounding the Marañón River. Our partner Alfredo Mires made a brief adaptation for nº 2 of our book “El Domador de Cuentos” (The Tamer of Tales):

They say that one day the devil went out to sell evils throughout the land. At that time, they say, there was not so much variety of evils.

With his sack on his shoulder the devil was on the road, selling.

The evils were in dust and he sold them packaged.

They were all colours of dust, these evils: there was misery and disease, greed, hatred and opulence, ambition - which is very bad when it is not owed- and thus, of all evils there were.

And among those packages was a small and white powder which was the evil of discouragement.

So it was that people were buying from the devil to do evil amongst themselves.

The devil charged a good price for every one, but the little package with white powder they just looked at and nobody paid attention to it:

- What is that then? They asked out of curiosity. And the devil answered:

- It's discouragement.

And people said:

- That is not a good evil! —And they didn't buy it. But they did take several packages of misery, greed as well.

The devil was upset because people did not understand what the evil was worth. When someone was finally encouraged to buy it, they asked:

- How much?

The devil answered:

- So much - it was a very high price, more expensive than all other evils. The people laughed saying:

- What?! For that little package which is not so great an evil you want to charge so much? This devil is very devilish and he wants to deceive us ...

So he sold all the evils, and the little packet nobody wanted to buy it because it was little and the people said that discouragement was not a good evil. But the devil said:

- With this one all, without this none.

Most people laughed thinking that the devil had gone stupid!

Then the devil, with even more anger and laughing with a devilish laugh, said:

- Here you go!" And he threw all the white dust into the wind to spread throughout the world."

And so it was that all evils came to be because that evil is all evils.

You just have to repair to realize: if one is lucky and powerful, but falls discouraged by life, nothing is worth it. And if he is humble and poor, discouragement loses him more later.

This is how the devil did evil to the whole earth, because without discouragement no evil could trap any man.

And it is already installed in the world, with some more and with others less; but it always arrives and no one can really be good, because you cannot resist as you should the strong struggle of the soul and the body that is life.

I hope that discouragement never wields our whole heart.