It is easy to look upon some men and judge them, dismissively, as one would swat a fly. But listen to me when I tell you that no man is a fly, even if he is hovering around filth. Listen to me when I tell you that you and that man you hate are the same. Listen, when I tell you, the moaning of his soul sounds the same in both anguish and delight.
How does one start here, and end up there? We know that age alone doesn’t give us wisdom, or our elders would all be saints. We know that the old are anything but saintly… we know their misery, their longing, their absence. When we see a sympathetic old man on the street who, when he walks, does so with caution, and a hand dependent on a cane, it is our imagination which terrifies us. Why is he alone? His clothes—they’re cheap. Surely, if you were that old, you would have the money to buy the finest linens? Where is the joy that comes from grandchildren, those figures of our immortality in their loving presence. I see in his eyes a profound sadness… I see nothing, the closeness of his distance from the world he walks through… alone… alone.
And that will be you one day. You will be that old man. You will not die in a blaze of glory in your youth on the hill of promised greatness. It will slip away, all of it—your lovers, friends, goals and pursuits. Your energy will wither away just as your muscle tissue does, those gains in the gym gone to memory as well. Not young enough to start something new, not enough time. An old dog is too tired to learn new tricks, even the ones that would save him from himself. No, you will sink, sink deep into your rot, without even the company of those who die alongside you.
That is your fate, should you continue on selfishly, in abandonment towards temptation. That is your life when you reach for it all and hold nothing, untold riches, fame, glory, women, falling downward aimless to another’s hand. This is your punishment, for your arrogance, and your weakness—for being too weak to resist. Judge carefully, for the world judges you as well.
What is good, and what merely feels good? Where is goodness located? Is it in the head? The heart? Is it your dopamine, your serotonin? Is it in the painting, the red and amber hues playing in love with the swept emerald and blues which depicts, masterfully, a garden full of fruits? Is it in your Rolex? Is it the speed of your plunging Porsche into the night? Is it the fraught, tense space between your gaze and her body—curved, blonde ringlets a halo down around her temples, a sundress lay hovering an inch away from skin, gold sun-touched skin bare to the sky and the world? Is it the silk sheets? Is it your hurried violent embrace when, with great technique, your wrapped fist meets with the crushed pad held by the master who shows you The Way?
I should think not. Where is goodness located? Well, let’s ask ourselves what we are alive for. And when we ask, let us ask about the things that won’t leave us abandoned and alone in the dark pessimism of our long-toothed years.
Human children, babies, are the most useless and for the longest time by far in all of the animal kingdom. We are dependent, heavily, upon the good will of our parents. They must clothe us to keep us from filth and coldness, they must feed us, the mother, with her own body, or we will perish into our own skin. We cannot fight. We cannot run. We are entirely in the possession of another, and our fate is theirs to will. As we grow old, we gain many things. We learn, we are summoned into memory, we reach upward with shooting bones until we see the world from a higher vantage point. We become less round and malleable, and more slender, angular, with defined features on our face that distinguish us from the other children around us. We inherit our culture, their morals, their art and attitudes. And then we go on into the empty space of our society with one mission—make something of yourself.
And how does one do that? Make something of yourself. Do we do this by possession? Is our life that of the squirrel—he who gathers resources as a way to survive a long, cold night? No.
Humans are creatures of imagination. This is, fundamentally, what differentiates us from the World. We see a stone, and turn it sharp, place it on an arrow, and make it tense against the string of a bow, and with good aim, shoot it into the body of a deer. By this way we capture what we once could not capture, and we feast and give thanks and use the hide as clothing, the bones as tools and instruments, and the meat as sustenance. We use our imagination to fashion tools which transform us from something that is ecologically among Nature and we turn into something that ventures through it… and towards what, exactly?
Towards mere possession of resources? Through conquest for the sake of conquest? I think not. We are men made in the image of God… a God which speaks, breathes, echoes far into the World, who shifts, transforms, inhabits and changes the World, everlong. God… is a shooting comet, and we are made in his image.
It is said by Kierkegaard that life makes sense when looking backwards, but it must be lived forwards. And perhaps it is our lot to be like the comet, which reaches down into space and leaves trailing behind it through our cutting hand into emptiness a great, sparking light which casts dark into shade, which gives warmth to others, and will shoot off into the far away, unknown places where it might twirl and dance and find itself a song.