What Kind of Story Ends Like This?

 This is the story of three neighbours whose common humanity wasn't enough to loosen up their karmic entanglement. Let's introduce the neighbours. The first nieghbour's name is Brittany. Brittany was out and about in the neighbourhood one day. We'll get to her in a minute. The second neighbour's name is Hans. Because of his relatively close proximity to Brittany, they might be considered friends. However, in reality they're not too fond of each other. The third neighbour's name is...hmm, let me think. I've always wanted to name someone after my own nickname, EG. I know...I'll call the third person Egy (pronounced just like EG). Egy looks too similar to my own nickname though. So let's add a silent letter to separate them even more. Let's add a silent P to the end of Egy to make it Egyp. English is full of silent letters. Don't forget, that P is silent! Egyp is still pronounced as EG.

Back to Brittany now... One day, Brittany was out and about for a walk in the neighbourhood and she invited herself to Egyp's house. During this forced visitation, Brittany, who suffered from mild cognitive impairment, became confused about where she was and the ownership of the house. For a little bit, she was under the impression that she was the owner of the house. This didn't go well with Egyp who felt victimized by all of this. Egyp asked Brittany to go home. Once Brittany started being asked to go home, she started regaining her normal consciousness. However, she felt bitter by being told to go home. And together with the confusion of once thinking this was her house, she started putting some of Egyp's belongings into her bag. 

Egyp saw her bagging some of the belongings. Egyp did his best to take back his belongings from Brittany but in the end, she ended up walking out with quite a bagful of Egyp's personal items. Brittany walked on home, slowly coming back to her senses. However, she didn't come to her true self enough to realize that what she had done was wrong. You could say that, as humans, we're only able to see as much as our level of consciousness lets us see. And so, Brittany ended up with all of these goods at her house. And quite honestly, she felt rather good about her new belongings.

Now, Brittany had created much chaos on her way out of Egyp's house and so Egyp couldn't gather his consciousness very quickly after that. Egyp needed time to recover. He needed time to get over Brittany's self-entitled and delusional thievery. He talked to some of his neighbour's about it and he was surprised to find out that Brittany had gotten away with very similar things at their houses. Apart from that, other neighbours said that Brittany's behaviour sounded just like Frank's actions at their own homes. Egyp didn't know Frank very well but he was just glad Frank didn't come over either. This is when Hans came into the picture. 

Hans acted like a friend and sympathized with Egyp's loss. Hans seemed very eager to learn more about the artefacts in Egyp's house. He studied them meticulously. Egyp trusted Hans enough by this point to let him study the various items that lined the walls of his home. One day when Egyp wasn't looking, Hans took a few items for himself. Whereas Brittany was suffering from mild dementia, Hans' reason for stealing was his obsession. It was the same obsession that kept him studying Egyp's artefacts. However, Hans only took a few items that were in boxes in Egyp's storage room. Hans was hoping that Egyp would never find out.

Many years passed by. Egyp had started asking for the stolen goods back from Brittany. By this point, some of the stolen goods were hung up all around Brittany's home. Her shameless showcase of these goods didn't seem to bother her. And she ignored Egyp's pleas for her to return the artefacts. Meanwhile, Egyp noticed that some of the items from the storage were missing.  Egyp caught wind of Hans' true reasons for coming over to study his things. Egyp also went to Hans to ask for the goods. Just like Brittany, Hans ignored Egyp's pleas.

Now, this would be a terrible story if it ended here, no? Surely, this story needs a resolution. It needs something to balance the equilibrium between the neighbours. What kind of horrible story would it be to end right here? Now, I have some bad news my dear readers. As much as this story is far from over in the traditional understanding of what a story is, there isn't much more to it than this. 

The closest thing to a normal ending was when Hans told Egyp that he might consider returning the goods if Egyp asked his mom to talk to Hans' mom about this. And even then, it wasn't a pledge to return the items. It wasn't for sure. Hans just said he may or may not consider it if Egyp chose to take that route. Would you trust someone who stole things from your home when you weren't looking?

So, dear readers, I ask once again. What kind of ending to the story is this? It's not at all like the films we're all used to watching. In the films, the bad guys usually get caught. Thieves go to jail no matter how good-hearted or lovable they seem. And justice is always restored. Where is the justice in a story that ends like this? Perhaps, the end is yet to come. The universe has laws. Karmic laws suggest that both Brittany and Hans have it coming to them. The more they delay the return of the stolen goods, the longer they'll need to wait to process other karmic energies. The sooner they let it go, the sooner they can take care of other karmic loose ends. What would you do if you were Hans or Brittany? And what would you tell Egyp if you were his close friend?

The above picture is Nefertiti's bust, currently being held in Berlin's Neues Museum. I didn't know the Germans had Egyptian ancestry, enough to display such a rare artefact in Berlin. You can search the web and see plenty of articles about the diplomatic tensions between Egypt and Germany about this stolen artefact. 

The reason I wrote this was because a Youtuber deleted my comment on his video. I'm not going to advertise the channel by telling you which one it was. Basically, this is a channel of a guy who posts funny videos. For this video, he entered the Neues Museum in Berlin and put on a show like he usually does. I'll admit that the video itself was humourous. I scanned the comments, wondering if anyone else was thinking what I was thinking. Why were there so many Egyptian artefacts in a German museum? Sadly, I only found one single comment about this. I replied to the comment, partially hoping to raise awareness about this issue. Clearly, this channel's audience wasn't well-informed about the fact that Egypt has been asking for these Egyptian artefacts to return home. Nefertiti's bust was stolen over a hundred years ago and Egypt has been asking for it to come back for nearly as long.

My reply to the comment on this video was as follows: "haha meanwhile, Egypt has asked for the return of the Nefertiti bust in this very museum. Funny video but I don't think I'll be visiting a place full of pillaged goods anytime soon."

I just didn't like getting my comment censored like that. This channel's audience clearly needs more awareness around these things. However, it didn't turn out so bad. I ended up writing a blog post about it and getting it out of my system this way. The following screenshot was taken a few days ago and the video was posted about a week before that. I realized my comment had been deleted when I received a response, clicked on it, and then couldn't find my comment anywhere. The original comment to which I had replied to was also deleted.