Come... Sit with me for a while and let us commune with one another.
*Strikes a match as he sits back into his giant mushroom chair, and lights his cigar... softly blowing the smoke into the air.*
Though this beginning reads as a story, it is critical for the reader to be able to see as I do. My life is an illusion, partly delusion, and full of imaginary reality. For I live in my mind and my body is only the response of the thoughts therein. I do not see things in a single spectrum, I see the tree as well as the forest, the passing of time wherein it will grow, seed, and rot. I see it before it was a tree and imagine all the hardships it has endured as well as the joys it has been part of. I ponder how many lives it has partaken in... whether by holding up the nest wherein life sprung from another or by feasting on their corpse. I hear the echoes of the Fey, blending into the drone of busy-ness that this life is consumed with. I see that which is not of the physical realm, just as clearly as those whom I can reach out and touch. I see the auras of darkness and light, that our minds wrap us in and our spirits stir to balance. Over time, that balance has become swayed to the brink of toppling and it is rather disheartening to watch the devastation that creeps in slowly, one generation to the next as it would seem that mankind has lost its greatest tool... the ability to critically think for one's self. The masses are easily swayed, mentally unstable and thus they are guided blindly by those who seek to walk them into the chopping blocks while they rejoice in their own destruction... like bleating sheep or Mooing cattle. This world would have you only focus upon the tree... that being yourself, or the forest... that being every distraction around you. It is only that though, a distraction, like wind rustling the upper branches as it whips through the forest. It is neither good nor bad yet both good and bad. The wind simply blows... to some, it spreads seeds of new life, while to others it removes branches or fells the weak and dying.
Let us stop the wind so they might remain.
Doing so would remove the vital nutrients and space that the next generation requires to grow for itself. Yet we will strive to stop the wind. How will the seeds be spread then? We will gather the seeds ourselves and plant them further out so they might abound. True, this will work, while in doing so, increases our labor fourfold, wherein we fret over the preservation of the next generation. For each successful growth of that which we toil over, we celebrate and look to the next field to plant. We teach the next generation to repeat what we have done, oblivious of the devastation we inflict to the land beyond the closest portion of forest. We robbed it of the seeds that the wind would have scattered. We used up the resources declaring it to be more important than the realm that required it to live. That which once was, lays barren and desolate, and along with it... all that could only survive in that once lush land of forest and fields. We push ever onward till the oceans come within view and it is only then that whatever generation still exists, can see the folly of removing the wind. For in the ocean, there grows no trees.
As a people, we strive to remove the natural balance that once existed. We yearn for that which once was, yet can not be replaced and is only a memory in stories once lived. Our relationships are laid barren, our homes are but ruin while we cry out that it is our right to have more and do better but only for our individual self. We do not contemplate the outcome with a critical mind. We simply follow along in what sounds "right" for the me or the mystical them, refusing to see the slow creeping devastation, despite all the evidence that we do harm in removing the natural order. Then we double down and try to correct it by inventing yet another way... a way that was proven wrong by our forefathers yet we have better technology, better thought process... duplicating the mistakes ever quicker, with harsher ramifications yet declaring it will be better. When do we learn? When will contentment come in having enough? When do we look upon our partners and neighbors and say I will find happiness in you, with you and strive for a peaceful end? When will we lay down our shovels, tear down that which blocks the wind and cast the seeds into the air, trusting that the natural balance will give and take accordingly so that we might look across the horizon and see what beauty each day may yield?
Life is all about you when life is no longer about you.
"Nobody can serve two masters. In the end, they will cling to the one and abore the other."
*Stands and nods before returning to the darkness of his woods.* With that, I bid you a good day and hope it is one worth remembering.
Max
