It isn’t the lay who suffer, nor is it the grand. Nor is it even the man who walks a foot in each, nor the one who has no feet. Nay, it is the mass.
And yet, we cannot help but be human.
We are designed to be selfish, compelled to be by innate sensibilities and nature’s ever present reminder that she takes no prisoners. We know this.
We deny this, but we know nonetheless. Within every decision we’ve ever made, every act of kindness and every bout of shrewd hostility there lies that tiny but certain consideration for yourself. We pretend that we’ve mechanized, industrialized humanity to the point of designer emotions and calculated balance.
But we are mere animals, and no delusion will change that.
So why, if you’ll allow me a brief aside to wash my woes in the thoughts of my brethren, should I feel guilty?
Ahh yes, that fickle little bitch, Guilt, and her tendril army seeking the chink you shamefully pray away. For millennia she patiently awaited her resurgence and when at last man announced that it was no longer proper to be human, she crept from the depths and shackled mankind to her breast, feeding off our insistence on mechanical denial.
I ask again, why should I?
It is true that nirvana is never meant to be found, but if it was, the map would be but a bit part. It is also true that some existences never merit much serendipity. It is even more true that a man who has found what he seeks will have nothing left to find. Yet with all these truths there remains a tension, a ripe chord that may yet fell the two-headed beast if we do not act and act soon, for second winds may be an invention of fiction.
It is by the ant that an empire topples, immediate revenge on the boot that ignorantly slain their fellows. Do we blame the boot? Or simply accept its misstep as an act of sheer folly? Do we blame the ant for his pain? Do we blame the world for bringing the two together?
My plea is a literal one that falls on deaf ears.
No, not deaf, lazy.
And so we’re back to the fickle little bitch and her amusements, drilling the chink with little regard to the gushing crimson that flows wider with every blow of the hammer. But that is why I’m here. It’s why you’re here.
I refuse.
I refuse to be made ashamed, to be caged, to be judged for my admitted selfishness. Because we should all be more selfish.
The fickle bitch’s cousin laid waste to this carefully constructed prism of idealistic assumption, so now sits still the jester, confused, baffled at the next move, awaiting a glimmer of shining steel waving from atop an approaching stallion.
It is the proverbial straw awaiting it’s turn to limbo. It is the shipwrecked surrounded by water yet dying of thirst. It is a man. Only a man, and he seeks the chance in life to runneth over, to want for naught but material.
Yes, it is the mass who suffer, the kind and the allied, and for that I am sorry.
It is a fool who blames the puzzlemaker when a piece is lost. Perhaps it is also the fool who accepts that it is now simply missing.
Matthew Philip 