Matt is the oldest son of some of our oldest friends from highschool (Tim and Gwen Hogan)...Enjoy!
I came upon a soldier one day he was lying beneath a beech tree drinking from a bottle of wine his armor was rusty and he had grown fat. From his face I could tell he was slobbering drunk.
“What place is this for a knight,” I asked him?
“This is where I belong, the world does not need men like me anymore,” he said.
“You speak nonsense,” I said to him, “it must be the wine, now get up.”
“Give me a war to fight; give me a tyrant to conquer; give me a dragon to slay; or give me a quiet place to die,” he said, “I do not wish to survive for the sake of survival itself. Boy don’t you see there is no enemy to fight, no army, no beast, no demon only an emptiness, a blackness thicker than a dead man’s blood and it separates each person from their sister and brother.
The world has grown small, there is no room for greatness only sameness and fairness or so they are called.
Life is no longer to be tolerated only existence to survive in this new and lifeless world you must cease to live and accept the terms of popular society created by a monster that does not exist you live on a foundation of unreal ideas.
there is no safety, and no governor tyrant monster or demon can protect you from the life you forsook for the sake of existence. Don’t you see? Everything you know is a lie, and all for you to feel as if you can be safe. You’ve forgotten that there can be no endless ocean to make you feel small if there is no danger there can be no high mountain to silhouette against the setting sun, no cold winter, no falling snow.
No, no I think not.
I will not cling dearly to your backward world where men race to their own destruction and do not even see that hell is where they are going. There is no beast to kill anymore because everything is dead, so there is no one to save from the bold demons because they don’t want to be saved. So, how can a hero be of use to a race that wishes to remain enslaved?”
It was true, the soldier was right, the villain was no being, but rather something that was missing. Not something that needed to die but rather a thing that needed to live, and you cant bring that about with sword or shield or any army small or great.
How can men live in such a senseless fear, and what’s more why would they?
The soldier continued, “The worst of deeds had indeed begun with the best of intentions. They wanted to protect themselves and who can fault them for that? But they were too proud to see that we were not strong enough, and that to destroy pain would mean to destroy the reason to live.
It would destroy the one element that allowed for beauty.
It would mean the death of humanity and the birth of a race that knew only empty existence. But, they were so blinded by the driving false hope that they might conquer all pain for the sake of an imagined peace that they did not see that they were poised to strike the heart of their own life. And now no man can see his neighbors and the world is whatever he wants it to be because what he wants is all that matters anymore. The truth is lost locked away from our minds so we can’t remember the hurt and the pain.
The men and women that lead us alter the perceived history of a race that once was human, now abolished by the pursuit of the phantasmal idea that is perfection. If only we could let go and feel the wind on our face without trying to control or understand, to touch the flame and know the pain that makes us remember why we try so hard to live, to walk the mountain road and feel small in the waves of the sea, to know the world as it should be, to be free of the idea that we can master our fate.
Life was never supposed to be safe, it was instead meant to be beautiful. But, how do you convince the hell-bent that there is something better than this safe empty life? How does one conquer a lie? The simple answer is with the truth, but the truth must be believed to set one free.”
“So why not endeavor to bring life and truth,” I replied, “why must you surrender only because you cannot see what it is that you fight?” the question was rhetorical but he answered anyway.
“I do not surrender child,” he said, “I refuse to fight because I cannot win. No matter what, the people will succeed, and in some ways they already have. They have destroyed the prophets and ignored the signs, and they die for it. I tried to save them, but they didn’t want to be saved. They wanted freedom but did not know how to have it. I failed them it is too late.”
I looked him straight in his drunken eyes, and I said with fiery indignation, “you are wrong!”
I walked away into another part of the world and never returned to that place. But, I never forgot what I learned that day from the defeated knight.
Life was supposed to be dangerous, and without danger there is no mortality, no humanity.
But, above all I learned that the impossibility of a war you cannot win is no reason why not to fight it.
It is worthwhile to lose for a just cause.
