Dust Elephants

 It starts as a little thing really..a bit of easy emotional housekeeping. Someone lifts the mental rug

and another sweeps whatever issue between them under it. There is an agreement to let it be. No one can see it and so, just as when they were children, they believe it does not exist. As time goes by, this ritual is repeated again and again. 

 What started as an easy way to keep the peace has become a lifestyle. Eventually one person cannot see another for the mole hill, turned into a mountain, standing between them. Some will try to climb it only to either slip and slide and come rolling back down in complete failure or they will huff and puff and mop their brow at the effort it took just to reach the top of that mount of denial, vowing it is far too much work. Planting themselves on top of the hill and refusing to budge and vowing to never make the trek again. Others prefer to go around the subject. It is a journey of many words and it is equally exhausting. 

  As always happens, someone new comes along and see the lump in the middle of the room. It might be an elephant made of dust, one never knows it is covered so well with threadbare cloth. Unaware of

the rules, this well meaning soul will lift up the carpet and peer beneath, sending up great waves of half forgotten slights and unresolved issues drifting on the breeze. 

  There will be great clamoring, protests and complaints. Sputters of "how dare you interlope!" and the like shall be shouted from on high of the mount. The visitor will be perplexed. In an effort to solve a problem that can only get larger and will someday out grow both the rug and it's room, they have unwittingly become the target of scorn. An instigator. The lesson is simple. Some would rather wallow in piles of ash then to live together in truth.