How?

How much longer, how much more, how much farther,? Carry me home, carry me home no matter how long it takes, no matter how big I am, no matter how long the journey. Did you forget me, did you neglect me, the debt has yet to be paid. I still cry, I still need, I remain unfulfilled, unsated. Barely conscious but yet somehow sentient, knowingly unknowing. Unknowing. Unsure, unsteady, not fully formed. Parts of me are soft and gelatinous, the parts that feel deeply, the parts that do not comprehend wanton cruelty or unprovoked sadism, or the even more incomprehensible pure evil.

If there is evil, can it be redeemed? What does redemption look like for random amorality? Perhaps the price is too great for us to comprehend, perhaps it takes lifetimes for the debt to be paid. And what price for a life, what price for misery, what price for pain? What does righting the wrong even begin to measure?

Perhaps the biggest fear is that some wrongs can never be righted, some debts never paid. Is the final analysis ever fair and equitable, or can we simply not see the obscenely large scale of the measuring apparatus. I would like to believe there is justice, but mortal eyes cannot see it, cannot envision it. The only just vision I can describe is the one of fantastic dreams where caterpillars talk and rabbits are obsessed with time. Are dreams the only fodder of justice?

IN the background 60 Minutes is telling the story of how Saudi Arabian royalty assasinated journalists who painted them in less than flattering colors. Perhaps this is as far as justice every goes in our incredibly finite lifetimes – you wrong me, I kill you. In my vision, you have only robbed someone of their physical reality, but I would like to believe there is more to our lives than that. If that is true, why am I afraid to die?

I have to believe the space we take up is infinitesimal compared to the breadth and depth of the Universe. The absurdity of believing that homo sapiens are the proverbial crown of creation always makes me giggle…right before it stimulates frightening thoughts of what that would mean. Does it mean the literal War of the Worlds? Would it mean live enactment of the pinnacle of the Star Wars series, where there are infinite numbers of fantastic and unbelievable life forms that far outreach my own. Like a typical human, my imagination goes directly to “what does this mean for ME?”

Is my only responsibility to grow, or is it to dream? If it is to dream, I’m underdeveloped. Somewhere along the line I got the message that impractical dreams are of no value. Dream of your success, dream of your earnings, dream of wanting for nothing. Rarely did we hear the advice of dreaming of a peaceful world, or a world where money matter little, or a world where people did not die of hunger in the middle of fields of plenty. We dreamed of being exceptional, of having opulent wealth in comparison to the average bloke.

What do I owe to this world? Perhaps it is not to dream of a better world, or even a better me, but to be a better world, to be a better me. Fake it until you make it. Live as if the goal has already been realized. Make the future catch up to the past. Or something bizarre like that. That causes me to wonder if I wouldn’t be simply fooling myself. Maybe, or maybe I would be attracting the reality I seek. Hmmmm.

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows. And those with evil hearts know. Those who fall victim to the evil-hearted may never know the utter void of good that exists there. Evil is a complete mystery to me, as is cruelty. In my day, I have wanted to say the most hurtful thing possible to hurt someone I believed had wronged me, but that was an experience limited to that context. My identity is not linked to acquiring power over others by any means necessary. Perhaps I would be better off if that was the case, but in my experience it only means that you live in a pyramid scheme of affectation and burgeoning debt service. Power is a false god, with short-lived benefit.

Indebtedness never yields a zero-sum balance. We are never in absolute control. I am thinking the best we can do is unflinching acceptance of that reality.