hollowman

The Hollow Man

Once upon a time there was a hollow man. He had nothing inside of him. Nothing. Empty space. Hollow.
It is not good for people to be hollow. People need stuff inside. All kinds of stuff, from hearts to dreams. But he didn’t have anything. No heart. No dreams.
He tried to live, he tried to be a man, but, somehow, it didn’t work. No one liked him, no one wanted him around, he wasn’t able to be a man, only a hollow one, but it just wasn’t enough.
One day, the hollow man was walking through a crowd. Like always, he was bumping into people, because he never moved away to give someone room, because he didn’t really care. How could he care, he was hollow? And so people around him, people he bumped into, or people that bumped into him, yelled at him, told him to watch out, pushed him, but he didn’t care, he kept walking, no real goal ahead of him, just going in an empty, hollow way. Straight on.
But on this day, something else happened. There was another hollow man coming towards him, through the crowd. Because neither of them cared about the directions of other people, neither of them gave way, and because they were going exactly toward each other, they bumped straight into each other with great force, neither of them slowing down even a tiny bit. They crashed, mightily. But because they were both hollow, their crash produced a huge hollow clang, a sound, an echo inside both of them. They resonated loudly. Everyone turned toward them, toward the mighty clang and everyone realized the two men were hollow and that they produced sounds when banged on.
The two hollow men stood in the middle of the crowd, facing each other, surrounded by people, who started banging on them, producing great sounds.
That’s how the hollow man realized he was much better off just being a drum, because it is good for drums to be hollow, but it is not good for a man to be so.
From that day on, the hollow man was a drum, and a great one, at that.
One could almost say that the hollow man was happy from then on, if the hollow man was capable of feelings, which he wasn’t, since he was hollow, and if he was a man, at all, which he also wasn’t. He was now a drum.
And the people who were using him as a drum were also much happier, because they had a great drum and they didn’t have to be around the hollow man anymore, whom they didn’t like, because no one really likes hollow people, because they don’t care about anything.
All in all, we can say this story has a very happy ending, because it all worked out for the best. For the hollow man and for the people.
What happened to the other hollow man is another story, one best left untold, because it might not have a happy ending.
Or maybe we can just assume that he also became a drum.
And then everything was really fine in the end.
Unless there are other hollow people in the world.
But even this problem can be solved, if they all become drums.
The more drums and the less hollow men, the better.
And the happier the ending of this story.