Stories Shape Worlds

In my third of three interrelated blogs about what shapes the world we live in, I would like to speak to those constructing the reality we perceive, those tellers of tales and builders of paradigms. For some time now you have forgotten the original magic that drew you to words and stories. What so clearly influenced you as a child you set aside somewhere during the growing process in light of the “realities” the adult world sought to convince you of. Somehow you forgot what you knew to be true, became convinced by the stories told by those who had neither conviction nor beauty in their craft. You came to believe in their ugly story, though to be fair to them, it was the best their storytelling ability could weave.

What they lacked in beauty and truth they made up for in insistence and threat. They sold you an ugly story and they did so by telling you the beautiful and true were childish notions. They told you what you believed to be beautiful and true was dangerous, and that the only safe alternative was to reach less far and for something of far less value. And you believed it, because they seemed so damned sure of themselves. You were trusting, because that is what people who embrace the beautiful and the true are. You were willing to believe that others knew more than you because you didn’t want to believe that anybody could really know that much less.

So you began to live the lie, even though you knew it was a lie. You knew a life so mundane and ugly must be a lie, because life must be better than that. You knew their story was not the real one because you had caught a glimpse of something so much more wonderful.

You never really gave up on the vision you had. Instead, you accepted to live within the lie in order that you could fight it from the inside. You would inhabit the lie and while experiencing it you would learn for yourself the flaws in the story. And there were many gross, horrible flaws in the ugly story spun for you by others. Still, you doubted yourself. You told yourself that perhaps you only wanted to disbelieve the story they told you precisely because it was so sordid and base. You doubted yourself because you had such a scrupulous conscience and felt such a need to be certain about your beliefs. More than anything, you wanted to know the truth—even if the truth was not beautiful—because if it was not beautiful, you would find a way to make it so. You would discover the truth and then overcome all odds to insure that beauty as well as truth won the day.

But the game was rigged against you. You fought the fight on their home turf. You let the tellers of the ugly lie decide the rules, and even then you foolishly assumed they would follow the rules they had created. But they were the tellers of the ugly story, and tellers of the ugly story aren’t able to conceive of a world where playing by the rules ever pays off.

It’s not their fault. Like you they were made to believe in the ugly story, but unlike you, they never got to experience the beautiful one. They were taught their lessons when they were young. They were taught ugly lies and in turn they acted upon them.

It’s a funny thing about a story. The story shapes your perceptions about the world around you. If the story says that people are basically bad, you will behave in fear and doubt and your experiences will basically confirm what you believe. But, if you believe in a beautiful story, if you have even once glimpsed a world that is beautiful, where people act according to the most noble of ideas, you will behave towards others in faith and love and that faith and love will transform your interactions with others.

Not always. The people who have been taught the ugly lie have been taught their lessons most cruelly, and they will not easily be swayed from the story that has caused them to be so guarded, so hurt. It takes someone well versed in the beautiful story not to be dismayed by those so deeply suffering from the ugly lie. Both sides, whether they realize it or not, are spreading the story they have been told, hoping to make their version of reality the official one.

The people who tell the ugly lie are hurting, and their hurt is proof to them the world is ugly. They deny the beautiful and the true but each time they do a little part of them dies. They oppose the story that is beautiful and true, but deep within them they are seeking it. They wish to be proven wrong, but have no great faith that it will happen. They do not realize that their behavior is precisely what is keeping them from truly experiencing it.

They are at war, the ugly story and the beautiful story, each seeking to disprove the other, each seeking to dictate the behavior and attitudes of us all. Each of us are soldiers in that battle, whether we see ourselves as conscripts, soldiers of fortune, or defenders of all we hold precious. If you think of yourself as a proponent of the beautiful truth, you must be as certain of your convictions as the other side pretends to be. You must show leadership. The story you tell must show beauty and truth, free as much as it is possible to be from the ugly and the untrue. For those who suffer from ugly lies will be quicker to see your hypocrisy than you ever will. In that way they will make you a better person if you permit them to.

For that reason you can never allow the belief that you are on the right side to permit you to act in ugly ways or to lie. You cannot win the war playing by their rules. You cannot win the game by accepting the ugly lie as a weapon you can use. In fact, you cannot beat them by thinking of them as your enemy. That is not the story you believe in. The story that is both beautiful and true is that all men are your brothers, all women your sisters. The beautiful truth is that we are all one, all of us destined for some future more wonderful than humanity has ever permitted itself to conceive of before. Thus the struggle is not against others but in the struggle to drag all of humanity more towards the beautiful and the true. And the beautiful and true story becomes closer to being the more we are able, not to combat those who believe the ugly lie, but to help them to see a better way. For in the winning of a soul from darkness, the ugly lie becomes less believable. With every fight we avoid and everyone we are able to convert, the beautiful and the true become more so.

We have all written a few lines of both stories, none of us are angels or demons. Some have written in one more than the other but we need worry about judging or comparing ourselves with others. If there are any winners to be named it is the sinner who has repented, the sheep that was lost and has been found.

And there is the battle, there is the struggle, to close the one book and open the other. The book of ugliness and lies has more pages written in it than ever need be read, nothing more need ever be added. The pages are many but the story is one not worth reading. It is time we close the book, recognizing it for what it is. It is filled with ugliness and lies and while we should not seek to deny it, it is foolish to dwell upon it. Let it remain as a reminder of what should never be, something that collects dust as it becomes a relic of a world that was. The book of beauty and truth is waiting to be filled, its pages already bursting with stories of heroism and faith. And yet, for all the pages of testimony to beauty and truth that awaits being read, there is no end to the blank ones waiting to be written.

Speak Truth To Power

Speak truth to power. Speak the truth and you will win, no matter how powerful the opposition. For truth IS the ultimate power. That is why others wish to silence you.

Those who seek power, as they always have been, are ultimately without a truth of their own. They erect straw men, false representations of the truth, in order to hold on to their illusions of being in charge. Their arguments are empty rhetoric combined with threats. They seek to confuse the issues but truth is a knife that cuts through such arguments.

Speak truth bravely because those who would wish to rule want you to fear. But truth has nothing to fear, no reason to run or hide. When you are afraid seek comfort in the truth. Do not attempt to utter any truth that makes you fearful, for that is not the truth. When you have the truth the truth will have you. It will remove the fear that keeps you timid. It will insist on being shared with others, so much so that it will overcome whatever fear holds it back.

The truth is not a weapon to be used against others, it is a gift to be shared. Truth is a spark that resides in all people’s hearts, and the sight of it in one will alight the bravery of all. And when the truth is shared, then fear will vanish.

Words change worlds. Think of all the money that is spent on advertisement, all the money that is put towards changing your opinion. People want to shape your opinions so that you will see through their eyes rather than your own. They want you to doubt yourself so that you will trust them. Never trust a stranger—someone who wants to lead you—more than you trust yourself. And if someone asks that of you it is a good indication they are not trustworthy.

We need to keep things on a human level, need our sense of smell to be as much a part of the equation as numbers on a spreadsheet. Factory farms would not pass the smell test, and yet dollars and cents allow them to exist. Abstract reasoning rationalizes away what is so obvious to those who experience it. We need human values, not government values or corporate values. Once we belong to a corporation or a nation we are no longer fully human.

Thou shall not kill is a human value, but corporations and governments find ways around this. They come up with compelling arguments for why we as a group must do what we as individuals never would.

Be a human. Be yourself. Don’t let anyone tell you that you need to be anything different. And then look around at others and realize they are humans too. Realize they have love and hope and all the good things that reside in you, and if they act otherwise, it is only because religion, politics, or some other propaganda machine has made them behave in such a manner. But they are still human beings underneath all the sick ideas that have been pumped into their heads. We can reach them, make them loving caring people, if we do not surrender to the ideas of hatred and division ourselves.

Remember, truth is merely good news we cannot wait to share. It is a gift that we are fortunate enough to be able to impart. But it would be vain of us to believe that we own it so completely as to be able to determine how others receive it. We must give it away, not demanding anything in return. We must share it, realizing our supply only grows greater when we do so. It is a precious gift, too precious to dilute it with fear or expectation. Such things are poison to those who receive it, and who could be expected to show gratitude for such a gift? It is only the gift freely given that can ever be expected to be freely received. 

The New Art Movement

     We are overdue for an artist’s movement that will change the world. It may sound absurd to you but it is only because you have been sleepwalking through life of late, we have all been sleepwalking. It is we the artists who shape perception. We see the path and leave signs in our art for others to follow. But we have lost sight of this fact. We have allowed others to tell the stories, to paint the picture. We have allowed corporations and profiteers to take over. The world of late has been shaped by corporate artists for corporate interests. Hell, we’ve even become corporate artists ourselves, allowing ourselves to believe we do what we must to earn a paycheck.

     Even worse, we have become irrelevant. We have become domesticated, toothless, and fangless. We have forgotten the power we possess and quietly whisper half-truths and assertions we ourselves do not understand nor believe. We no longer even dare call ourselves artists because we fear what the name implies. We fear to take on such a bold undertaking and so call ourselves songwriters, novelists, painters, or filmmakers. But we are artists, all of us, all who seek to express beauty and truth. If we are not artists then we are propagandists. Even if we do not out and out lie, if we do not profess what we believe, if we do not reflect what we see, we are in the camp of the enemy by lulling the population into somnolence when we should be awakening them to their true condition.

     It is time once again for human art that expresses human values. Not money’s values, not machine values, not corporate values. When humans take back art they take back control of their path, their direction, their destiny.

     It must be done boldly, not with one eye behind us, fearing that it will not provide a living. The time has come for choice, the road has diverged and we must choose which path to take. In truth, the paths diverged long ago, and we have been stumbling halfheartedly through the tall grass. It is time to find the path those who have inspired us have laid clear for us.

     To crawl on the way we have been, meekly obeying our baser motives, denying all that is best of our humanity, or to embrace with both arms the visions we see at our best moments. Perhaps we have waited so long because we've allowed ourselves the belief that the other path, the path of doubt and timidity, offered at least a degree of security. Now we have walked it too far, can no longer deny the destruction and hopelessness that lies at the end of it.

     We must embrace our childish dreams with adult determination. It is not maturity to do otherwise, it is a refusal to develop ourselves into the most complete humans we can become, a refusal to grow into what we are capable of being.

     Crawl from your cribs and your playroom you call your man cave and stretch out into a larger existence than you have dared imagine. It can be frightening, yes, but it is worth the risk. The alternative is a life not lived. Put aside fear, and dare.

     Art is not a diversion, it is the summit of human understanding. Literature is not the construction of a beautiful though frail glittering glass ornament. It is the creation of a prism through which we are able to see the world we live in in a way we never have before. It is not the plaything of ivory tower intellectuals nor an escapist drug for bored housewives, but the raw, pulsing stuff of life, the essence, the soul.

     Art is a prism, not a microscope or telescope, which has us looking too finely or too far, but a prism to see what is before us, what is nearest and most relevant.

     You the artist shape how your audience perceives the world. You influence their behavior. It’s a big responsibility but you cannot avoid it. That is why you must try your utmost to give what you perceive to be the truth. To do otherwise, to produce work that is devoid of the deepest parts of you, is to tell others that the deepest part of you—and them—doesn’t matter. Is that the message you wish to convey?

     Charles Barkley once said that he was not a role model, but he was wrong. Once you have someone’s attention, you are a role model whether you like it or not. If you ask to be listened to, if you go out of your way to seek the attention of others, then you incur the responsibility that comes with that. You cannot merely entertain, it doesn’t work that way. You cannot offer only entertainment without message because that in itself sends a message, that life is a trivial game we play with no real purpose or moral aspects.

     The world is adrift on a rudderless ship, but you the artist are the rudder, you know it to be true. You ask for them to see through your eyes, to follow you as you weave your story. You are the navigator who sees the directions written in the stars. Do not tell the rest what they wish to hear but tell them what you have seen. Do not tell them for another instant what they want to hear when you know it’s not true, no matter how much approval or money you stand to lose.

     You are the artist. It is given to you to see what others do not or will not. It is given to you to speak of beauty and of truth. That should be enough. Indeed, there is no other reward that equals it.

Magic And Science

     Magic is a theme that has played a dominant role in all four of my novels. I’m not sure how the idea of magic has woven its way into my thinking but it has, and I continue to find new ways to interpret it. I’ve seen many of my favorite artists latch upon a single idea and go back to it again and again. A good idea, a unique paradigm, is worthy of being mined again and again.

     My main characters are magicians but my books aren’t so much about the performing of tricks on stage. Nor are they the kind of magicians that go to Hogwarts and turn people into animals. No, they are quite human people without any special powers. Except, perhaps, perception. They are able to see life in a way few people take the time to, are able to see beyond the accepted realities that have been built by a sort of group think. They walk paths off the beaten trail and so are able to see the things other people are too busy, too herded, to see. After all, being a magician is not a normal profession. It is perhaps something we think of doing when we’re young, but eventually we grow up and get real jobs.

     But there is something to the illusion, the sleight of hand. We want to know how the trick is done but we also want to believe that there’s something more than a trick involved. Sure, we know it’s not real, but it’s not really about reality, is it? There is something beyond the reality, or something that is real but not conforming to what we generally agree upon as “real”. What is truly magical, miraculous, is what takes place within us as we observe a trick being performed. That is where magic exists, within us, in our hearts and in our minds when we are able to observe things with un-jaded eyes. And that area where magic exists is an area quite foreign from science or objective observation. It has its own reality that can run concurrent to what we can quantify but exists slightly apart from it. It is a world of belief and faith just as it is a place that permits doubt and questioning of what the rest of the world accepts as solid fact. You see, when we believe, when we have faith, we are able to achieve many things that the outside world may say is impossible. And when we doubt what is accepted fact, we are able to overcome barriers that others never try to overcome. Indeed, many of us are never even aware that the barriers are there. I have noticed a growing idea that there is no such thing as free will. And for those who do not believe in free will it truly does not exist. You have to be able to see beyond the existing paradigms in order to overcome them.

     Hundreds of years ago religion was misused in order to restrict people’s reality. All of the advances of science would have then been considered impossible given the limits that were placed upon free thought. But scientists pushed bravely onwards and built an entirely new world beyond the imagining of anyone living a few centuries ago.

     But now ironically science itself is often used as a bludgeon to try to prevent us from seeing beyond the walls that have been constructed around us. Science has constructed rules and laws in the same fashion as religion once did. You see, no matter how enlightened we may believe ourselves to be, we cannot remove humans from the equation, their imperfections and unpredictability. Which is bad as far as science is concerned, but it’s where magic is able to flourish.

If You Are An Artist, The World Is In Your Hands

WARNING: In over 130 blog posts, I don’t believe I have ever resorted to vulgarity of any kind. However, I find it hard to avoid using a few vulgarisms on this occasion. Please forgive me if their use offends you and I will try to keep their use to a bare minimum in the future.

     I’ve been around the writing game long enough now to identify a certain attitude. It is one that is shared with critics of all art today, one that feels the need to heap scorn upon anyone who attempts a loftier style or desires to accomplish something more than amuse and distract their audience. To anyone who does not sufficiently amuse them, to anyone who makes them uncomfortable and makes them think a little, they use words such as pompous, pretentious, or arrogant.

     I have an answer to such criticism, one which I hope you won’t find too elitist or arty. Fuck you. You call me pretentious? I call you intellectual and moral cowards. You are too afraid to attempt what can and should be done and so you attack others for making the attempt. You masturbate because you are afraid to procreate. You play at life when you should be living it.

     To artists and audience alike I say to you: demand more! Be more! We ARE more than what some would make us. We have souls, we have purpose. Life has meaning!

     Artists today, especially when in pursuit of fame and cash, are unafraid to transgress any moral sensibility but they flee from any critical thought that might separate them from the safety of the herd or the cash of their potential customers. They are willing to dream up any sexual perversion, any sick violence in order to titillate their fans. Money has somehow wormed its way between artists and their audience when there should be no barriers between us. This is not a fucking business transaction, this is human communication at its most basic and honest level.

     Be men. Not men as we now describe them, crude, violent and stupid. Be men in daring to seek the truth and defend truth even when it is unpopular Be women. Do not indulge incessantly in adolescent fantasies but instead become the strong intelligent women the world needs. Be human beings and not pawns in a marketing game. Dare. Get out of the kiddy pool and think thoughts that make you uncomfortable. Brave putting down in you art your deepest darkest fears and hopes. Expose your most hidden selves to the light. Dream a dream that is worth sharing.

     The world needs changing but you are too timid to admit you have the power to make it better. It is up to you, no one else can do your job, share the perspective that only you have. You are important—nay, vital to this world, and it’s time you shook off your doubts and realized it.

It is up to you to show the world that ideas can accomplish what bullets cannot.

     Be bold, my friends, be bold. Not bold in expressing prejudice or hatred, but in expressing new ideas and optimism. Not bold to shock or offend but bold in order to enlighten and inspire.

     A culture whose artists are afraid to push further is a culture in decline. That is the power you possess as artists, to keep your culture afloat and moving ahead, to reach new shores and new heights previously unimagined.

     Do not be afraid to fail. Nor should you feel the need to accept society’s judgment of what success or failure is. Do not try to fit yourself into the cattle chutes called genres, but instead blaze your own trail, create what you see and feel, let what is inside of you be what it is meant to be.

     You owe it to yourself. You owe it to everyone who has influenced you, those who gave you a sense of wonder when in your childhood you picked up a book, gazed at a picture, or were enraptured by a song. And you owe it to a future that deserves the same as you received, art that speaks to the heart and the mind without further considerations of any baser motives. This is life. Art is life. Art is the communication that speaks to those whom you have never met nor will meet. It is the passing on of beauty and vitality. And it is in your hands.

Random Thoughts Part 3

Facts, like living things, have a value in and of themselves and demand respect. People who use them for their own ends and dismiss them when they are no longer of use will likely treat people in the same manner.

They say it is not the destination but the journey. And yet we struggle through traffic to wait in lines at the airport, only to go through demeaning searches and then be shoved into undersized seats. We have compromised too much, and so are unable to enjoy whatever destination it is we seek.

This is the sum total of the knowledge I have obtained in my thirty years of work experience: The ranting of an idiot, overheard by an intern and reported to his superior, will always spell trouble for the honest worker.

Only the very stupid are ever certain of anything.

Most animals sleep in a hole in the ground or hanging from a tree. Man alone has made for himself an elaborate resting place. And yet he is the only one to have developed the alarm clock to rouse himself from it, the only species to spend sixteen or more hours of each day away from it.

In the same way that youth is wasted on the young, retirement is wasted on the old. We should not grow old but young, to gradually increase into a naïve idealism rather than calcify into cynicism and disillusionment, to end our lives in the womb rather than the tomb. Our eyesight slowly growing keener, our skin becoming more sensitive, our appetite increasing as we rush to feel experience, keen in the knowledge that we truly must seize the day.

The world belongs to those with a single idea who are able to repeat it unendingly. You may charitably call them single-minded, but they are more often simple minded.

Where does alienation most manifest itself in our society? Whenever science, government, or business develops a really bad idea and we just shrug and say: “That is progress. It is unavoidable.”

Man has always sought to be a part of something larger and so has tried to change himself in order to fit that larger thing. What he seldom realizes is that he is a part of all that is merely by being uncompromisingly himself.

It takes a brave man to go to war, but it takes a nation of cowards to send him.

We tend to want to remake the world in our own image which why it is best to seek our own happiness. The best gift we can give others is to be happy.

The big events of our youth have profound influences on the rest of our lives. Similarly, the earliest events of our history (e.g. Troy or the American Revolution) play a major role in our society.

We build elaborate theories on a single narrow idea, like a pyramid balanced on a tin can.

In a sick society, no institution is untouched. No psychiatrist can diagnose the disease without being disbarred, no politician can point to the truth without being shouted down or gunned down. The poet, musician, filmmaker, or artist who attempts to define the problem will be ignored, left without a source of income or a way to have his work reach the masses.

Science is the process of obscuring the marvelous with explanations.

The mind can no more understand the heart than science can ever understand nature.

Stupid is never quiet. It is never modest, nor patient.

It is a fine distinction between permitting and promoting.

There is a third choice besides being busy and killing time, something profound.

No one has ever been paid to speak the truth. True, some people who speak the truth can wrangle out a living by doing so amusingly, but the real money is to be found in making lies sound good.

If you’re looking for the road to success, you only have to look behind the stack of excuses.

A child needs a parent or role model to believe in him, but to become a man he must learn to believe in himself.

The Mountain

An Allegory:

 

I cannot recall a single instance I can point to where I had first decided to climb the mountain. Looking back, there seemed to be no epiphany, no moment of clarity or certainty. It seemed to come upon me bit by bit, something that accumulated slowly until it had built itself into something within me that demanded attention. At some point I acquired a kernel of longing within me that attracted like minded sentiments. Around this kernel, ideas and ambitions began to wrap themselves the way a pearl is built upon a grain of sand. Evidently, there was some romantic notion of the mountain and man’s relation to it that appealed to the imagination of a young child. If you lean towards the metaphysical, then perhaps that seed was always in me and that it was destiny leading me since birth. At any rate, while there is no particular moment that I can say was the defining one, there are memories of moments that moved me in the direction my life has taken.

I have no memory of seeing the mountain for the first time; it has been there always in my life and in the lives of all those who live or ever have lived in the village of my birth. It towers in the western skyline, defying and denying for much of the day even the mighty sun. It is a boarder to all that lies beyond it, as defining and limiting to our pursuits as is the ground beneath or the sky above. But I can remember moments of seeing the mountain as something other than a backdrop to my existence, as something more than a limiter. I was quite a young child when I heard stories of the mountain and it significance to our world. I remember listening to a group of elders sitting around my parents table telling stories of the mountain. They spoke in reserved tones about the tales that they had heard, many which had been passed down from generations long forgotten. It was then that the idea of reaching the top first came to me as a goal worthy of pursuit. This mountain, as we all knew, was where the gods dwelt, or at least it touched the heavens where they made their home. It was taller than any other peak in all the world. It was jokingly said that even the mighty sun would scratch its hind side when it attempted to climb its peak. From the stories, I became impressed with the greatness of the mountain, and somehow the idea occurred to me what a great quest it would be to conquer it. No, not conquer, that is too foolish a world. Any man who scales a mountain is still but a man, a transient speck compared to the immensity and permanence of a mountain. Nevertheless, the thought of reaching the height of the mountain appeared to me equal to reaching the heights of human accomplishment.

Another moment comes to mind, the time when I heard that there were those who had already made the attempt to reach the summit. Many returned unsuccessful, many never returned at all. The legends also spoke of those who had reached the top and had returned to tell the tale. Some claimed to have seen the gods, others said they received revelation and instruction from the gods themselves.

It was clear that many of those who claimed to have reached the top were either liars or madmen. They preached things that made no sense or, worse yet, their words were meant to enrich their own power, prestige, or wealth. Still others were enigmas who went their own way in silence, or were driven away from their village when what they had to say was too unpopular. So although the legends had much to say on matters concerning the mountain, no one could say with any certainty what one could find there.

As I grew to adulthood, this question still possessed me. While some shared my interest, most among my village seemed quite unconcerned. Their work and family and holidays seemed to fill their time and interest well enough. I, however, gravitated towards people of like mind, and we discussed together what we had heard of the stories and legends relating to the mountain. We devoured whatever source we could find on the subject, and conjectured on the rest. Until, one day, the inevitable occurred; having exhausted all other forms of information, we decided that we would ourselves have to make the climb if we were ever to gain more insight. After long months of careful planning and preparation, we set out to find the answers to our questions, a small group of true believer with only that which we could carry. I can still clearly remember that day as we stood at the foot of the mountain and looked straight up at what we were about to embark upon. We had already lost three of our members before leaving the village, people who had decided they were needed where they were. Two more left us while still at the base, claiming the thunderclouds and lightning that encircled the mountain-top at that moment to be an ill omen. I myself almost went with them, not because of any omen, but because of the fear that clenched at my stomach at the thought of the trials that surely lay ahead.

 

The first part of the climb was perhaps the purest, for we neither looked toward what lay ahead nor what we left behind us. So dedicated were we with the climb that everything else was blocked from our sight—absolutely everything, including, paradoxically enough, the goal itself. It was too far away and our immediate concerns too pressing. Perhaps it drove us at some deep level, but it did not enter our conscious minds. It was almost as if the end of our journey were a thing we felt pushing at us from behind, if that can make sense. But whatever was working in our hearts, our minds and bodies were intensely focused on the tasks at hand. Any great accomplishment requires this disciplined approach to the task at hand, and we pushed ourselves to limits we did not know existed, which only inspired us to push further. To be young and to experience the feeling of being alive is a sweet feeling. To feel alive and to have a purpose and a goal to that life is better still.

But it is human nature that from time to time we stop to take a look around to assess where we are going, where we have been. We first halted from our labors upon reaching a vast plateau. We had known of its existence all our lives, had seen it from down below, but had no idea how huge it was. My first impulse was to look down rather than up to measure our progress. It is more encouraging to see what one has accomplished that to see what one still has to accomplish.

Looking down, we were amazed at how far we had come, how separated we were from our village that looked so small down below. The village below did not look as we had always thought. The distance seemed to rob it of its distinctions. And looking at last towards each other, we noticed that we too had changed. But it did not matter for us because we had taken so much of what we held dear with: friends, family, dreams, purpose.

Looking around we realized how different the land was around us. The air was so much purer at this height, the birds and animals more innocent of man’s threat to them. The madness and injustice that can exist amongst mankind seemed not to touch us upon this sacred mountain. So beautiful was this plain we had reached that when it was time to continue our journey, many of us wished to stay where they were. “This is good enough for us”, they said. “We have found something beautiful, and need ask for nothing more.” Whether they were right or wrong in their decision was not a question that came into my mind at this time. Had I stopped to think, I may have wondered whether they were daunted by the climb yet to come. For we had as yet only finished a small leg of our journey, and our effort and sacrifice had been great. Or, had I stopped to think, I may have wondered if they were not right in staying in this beautiful place. To be given all this and not be content was perhaps arrogant, and arrogance unto the gods is not a thing to be treated lightly. Perhaps, if I had thought, it was a fear of what they would find if they continued—a fear of failure—that made them decide to stay.

But I did not stop to think. My life I regarded as a small thing compared to my purpose. I was driven by this purpose, and was renewed by my rest in this idyllic place. For if such beauty could be found so low, imagine what awaits us as we ascend to the realm of the gods.

And so those of us who wished to continue our journey left our friends in this place. It was not easy saying goodbye, because we had already shared so much in dreams, work, struggle, and love. Those of us who continued felt no blame or bitterness towards those who stayed, anymore than we did to those down below who never desired to accompany us at all. It was our vision; those who did not share it had their own.

Of those who left the plain, there were those who turned back when the way became too hard, the obstacles seemingly impassable. Some perished in the climb. Some died saving others. Some escorted back down the mountain those who were too injured or ill to continue. We the survivors could do nothing to honor the dead but continue onwards. Our ranks continued to thin, until I alone said farewell to the last of my companions, a dear friend too weak and injured to endure. But my mind was set; for all of us, it was up to me to achieve the dream or perish in the attempt. Although alone, I knew no loneliness, for my vision was my comfort, my hopes were my warmth. Working without looking above or below me, I climbed. And in time I neared the summit, the place of countless stories and legends. For all I knew, I alone of all mortals had ever reached this height. And there above the entire world I found…

Nothing.

At the top of the summit I stood and looked at the heavens from this elevated spot. But to my complete disillusionment, the heavens were no closer than they had ever been. The sun was no larger, its radiance no warmer than it was to any human on the face of the world.

The force of my despair fell upon me. All that I was was pulled out from under me. For all there was of me had become but a surge toward this moment, and all my life had become false. Ah, how much better to be my companions, who did not live to see this moment, or to have stayed with those on the plain who could still aspire to more. Far better to be like those who had never felt the need to climb, who contented themselves with legend and myth and daydreaming. I alone had no hope, because I had killed hope for myself. With all the desire and all of the strength that I had, I had succeeded only in killing hope. I raged against the gods because they did not exist, or else were forever above me, indifferent to my plight. I wept like an abandoned child, feeling my total isolation. Overcome with emptiness I sat down at the edge of this, the top of the world, to look down at a world full of deluded people.

And looking down I saw all that was, stretched out before me. From the height to which I had ascended, the word was quite different from the one I had always known. I saw the world free from myopia, free from my prejudice and the ignorance of those who had taught me from the arrogance of their small beliefs. I saw a world without the borders that I had seen on every map I had ever looked at, a constant flow of forces unbound by the constraints that our tiny minds try to force upon the real. I saw man’s place in the world, so small. I saw lands never before seen by man, awaiting his arrival. I saw below me my friends I had left on the plain, indistinguishable from all the other people who lived on this earth. For the first time in my life I saw it all at once as one who is both distanced from and one with the world. I was the world’s eyes, regarding itself.

I sat and watched the beauty of all that is until the sun’s rays faded and darkness covered everything. And when no rays were left to aid my vision, I began immediately to descend, to share with others the vision I had glimpsed.