Now the lights are flickering, the walls are cracking, and he’s still insisting everything’s fine—as long as no one says otherwise.

For a long time, the house on the hill was known for its open doors. It was not perfect—its halls echoed with old disputes, its foundation needed occasional reinforcement, and it was constantly being repaired by those who lived inside. But that was its strength: it was never a finished structure, never static. People arrived, bringing new skills, new ideas, and sometimes, just an extra set of hands to help keep it standing.

It wasn’t always easy to live in, but it worked because it was built on the understanding that a house is strongest when those inside share the responsibility of holding it together.

Then, one day, the man at the head of the table decided the doors had been open long enough. He declared that too many people had been let in. He insisted that the ones already inside were enough to sustain the house, that outsiders only take from it, never contribute. And so, he shut the doors.

At first, it seemed like nothing had changed. The house still stood. Life continued. Those inside reassured themselves that perhaps this was for the best.

Then, the first signs appeared.

The kitchen, once alive with movement, grew quieter. The food that had always been plentiful became harder to prepare—there were not enough hands to tend the fields, to mill the grain, to do the quiet work that had always been done by those who had once arrived with nothing but the willingness to work.

The repairs that had always been handled without much thought became harder to complete. Those who had once kept the house running—the builders, the fixers, the quiet, unseen laborers—were no longer coming through the door.

The conversations at the dinner table, once lively with different ideas and perspectives, became repetitive. With fewer voices, there were fewer new thoughts.

The decision to shut the doors had not just sealed the house off from those who had once sustained it—it had created a vacuum, a shrinking of opportunity, a thinning of resources. And instead of admitting the mistake, the man at the head of the table turned the people against each other. Still, he refused to acknowledge that the house was changing, that it was beginning to wither under its own weight.

Instead, he turned to those inside and said: “We’re full. We can’t let anyone else in. If we do, it’s going to be a disaster.”

But when shutting the doors did not fix everything, he needed someone else to blame. Soon, it was not just the outsiders—it was the disloyal, the weak, the ones who would not fall in line. Those who had once sat at his table, those who had helped run the house, those who had followed him but hesitated when his demands became too great.

When the house struggled, it was because of them. They had not done enough. They had betrayed him. They had failed to be loyal.

And so, he cast them out, one by one.

And yet, even that was not enough.

For years, the house had been part of a larger community. There were other homes on other hills, neighbors who had built trust through decades of shared effort. If one home suffered, the others stepped in to help. There was an understanding that no house stands alone forever.

But the man at the table saw these relationships not as strengths, but as burdens. He began treating allies like competitors. He mocked their struggles, belittled their hardships, and refused to lend a hand unless he could extract something in return. He took decades of trust and reduced them to transactions.

One day, when a nearby home caught fire, its head of household knocked on the door of the house on the hill, pleading for help.

The man at the table scoffed. “Why should we help you?” he asked. “You haven’t been grateful enough for what we’ve already done. When was the last time you said thank you?”

The fire raged on, the house burned, and the man at the table watched from his window, unconcerned. And slowly, the neighbors stopped knocking.

They watched as the house on the hill distanced itself, mistaking isolation for strength. They saw it weaken from the inside, saw its leader dismiss their warnings, and saw the foundations start to tremble under the weight of its own arrogance.

But still, the man at the table believed he could do whatever he pleased. If he wanted another house, why shouldn’t he have it? He declared his intention to buy a grand estate in the distance—one that belonged to people who had no interest in selling. When they refused, he fumed, insisting that he had the right to expand his empire simply because he wished it so.

“If they won’t sell, maybe we’ll take it some other way,” he mused aloud, the words both a joke and a warning.

The people inside the house whispered among themselves. Was this really how things had always been? Had the house on the hill always been a place where one man dictated everything, where there were no rules for him, no boundaries he could not cross?

And when the storm came—when the winds roared against the walls, when the beams groaned and bent under the pressure—there was no one left to help.

The man at the head of the table had called this independence. Freedom. Strength.

But those inside knew better.

They had always known that a house is not defined by its walls, but by the people who keep it alive.

They knew that no family thrives by cutting itself off from the world.

They knew that no leader—no matter how convinced he was of his own genius—could hold up an entire house on his own.

And they knew, as history had always warned, that a house ruled by one man never stands forever. Because the moment a leader believes he is the house, he stops protecting it.

And the moment a house stops letting people in, it begins to collapse.

The only question is whether anyone will be left inside when it does.