What Problem is Bigger?

The Burden of Being "Small" 

We live in a world obsessed with macro-problems—global wars, corporate debts, and the anxieties of superstars. But at The Loving Rascal, we know that the heaviest weights are often the ones the world labels "small."What happens when a meager school fee feels like an immovable mountain to a debt-ridden farmer? What happens when a young man’s search for spiritual truth and love strips him of his family, his status, and his home? This piece explores the hidden, crushing parallels between two vulnerable souls who have nowhere left to look but up, waiting quietly for the rain.

What Problem is Bigger?

They measure crises in the halls of power,

By lines of debt, or borders set on fire,

By rising stars that threaten to eclipse

The corporate throne, the modern, gold empire.

"We have far bigger problems here to face,"

They tell the broken, hurrying past the place.

They claim the monopoly on grief and care,

And call their burdens heavy, vast, and rare. 

But turn the page to where the soil is deep—

A silent man who works the fading night,

Who dreams his children will not have to bleed

Beneath the weight of poverty’s cold bite.

A theater of wars inside his home,

No missiles here, just debt that starts to grow. 

The corporate giants crowd his narrow fence:

"We feed the thousands, you but feed a few."

And Gandhi’s face upon a piece of paper

Decides his worth, and tells him what is due.

A meager school fee turns into a mountain,

A daughter’s dowry casts a dark, old shade—

The same old taunts that broke her mother’s youth

Are waiting in the bargains to be made. 

The scene shifts softly to a fractured life,

A young man broken by a sudden grace.

He sought the ancient words to heal the blind,

But found himself an outcast from his race.

Exiled by blood, a high-caste ghost inside,

Betwixt two faiths, with nowhere left to hide. 

"How goes the house-hunt?" hear the voices mock,

A disturbing test to prove his mind is sane.

The child who loved his listening ear is gone,

Replaced by silence and a quiet pain.

A new love calls, yet leaves him stranded, wrecked,

He cannot turn the clock or change the past,

A nobody in kingdoms built by men,

Bearing a cross that leaves him standard-fast. 

In a fit of rage, she confronted him once: 

"What's your problem?" "You gazer." 

Dumbfounded, he knew not how to answer 

This pricking question, a sensation 

Perhaps, a prick in his conscience or was it

Love pure expressed, disregarding societal norms 

She's not his problem or solution. 

She's his love 😘 

As he sits still, knowing not if love is a big problem or a perfect solution.

She left a picture for the young man to ponder,

In Yellow and Green as a bride to be cherished.

Perhaps, she waits for a clothes exchange ritual,

Where the young man would do what she first did.

She took on his brown colours to let him know she shares

His profound love and perhaps, his hidden pain.

Or perhaps, she wants to remain in her husband's brown. 

The New Testament is fantastic, it is said—

It turns lunatics into kings, and kings into confused paranoids instead. 

As Jesus cleanses his bride with pure water of his living Word,

So must a husband lovingly purify his wife with words of wisdom and love.

Paul in Ephesians breaks the rigid societal norm;

A wife must submit of course,

But the husband must love her as his own body,

He who loves himself must love his wife through the storm. 

How small the problem seems to distant eyes,

A little loan, a campus door shut tight.

Yet vulnerability expands the dark,

And turns a shadow into endless night. 

But look—they stand together in the field,

The broken student and the weathered hand.

They have no armies, and they have no shields,

Just quiet hope upon a shifting land.

They look ahead, past agony and scorn,

And wait upon the Lord to send the rain,

To bless the season that is yet unborn,

And bring a harvest from the soil of pain.

We acknowledge AI's help to edit certain stanzas, and give the poem a fitting introduction. Thank you. –Loving Rascal