A thousand years ago we roamed through a forest in a secret world populated by creatures of legend and lived a life most people dream of.
It was our own Garden of Eden and it was built upon magic and miracles but unlike the tales some read in tomes they refer to as the Good Book we weren’t kicked out because of anything either of us did.
We just wandered too far far afield and got lost in the twist and turns of a dark wood under a cloudy sky.
It took a while to notice and when we did we shrugged our shoulders and built a new place and for a long while it was enough.
Until it wasn’t.
Those Misty Mountains
I don’t know when you let the snake convince you he was a friend, let alone a good one but I know somehow you mistook the cold coils wrapped about you for something warm.
And then you showed or told him about places and things he never should have known about or so I came to suspect.
Truth is it is possible that slimy serpent found out in other ways and used his tricks and tools to mask his malice from your eyes.
He might not have camouflaged his desire to know you intimately as well as he hoped. Perhaps you recognized it and told him he had no shot or perhaps not.
I don’t know.
There was a time I could have asked and been confident of the answer but now I am not certain. I cannot say if it is because we are like the US and USSR before the Wall came down or if years of being overseas have blurred my vision and clouded my perception.
A nobler man than I would forgive you for failing me.
He’d never say he was hurt or disappointed because it would be nobler to be the Fortress and Castle than the fool.
But nobility has been beaten out of me and I am no nobody’s hero.
Write A New Story
A while back I was given a task that I tried to refuse.
“Don’t ask this of me without understanding how I will take it. Don’t ask it without knowing I will go through floods, fire and famine to complete it.
Don’t ask unless you understand I will do it because of who I am and because I don’t know any other way. It is wired into my DNA.”
They persisted in spite of my multiple refusals and I eventually accepted.
What I did not know, could not know was the price that would be exacted from me.
At first I fought the change and did all I could to withstand the storm but eventually I was forced to retreat and find shelter.
Time after time I fought my way through the storm to where I had been, sometimes getting just a little bit farther than I had been.
But it didn’t matter because I couldn’t withstand the wind or stop the lightning from frying my brain.
It was painful failing and falling down.
Eventually I realized there was a different way.
All I had to do was let go of everyone and everything.
I did and in doing so I didn’t have to wonder or worry about being disappointed in bad behavior or broken promises.
It made a huge difference and I went from viewing the world as only being one way to another.
All I had to do was write a new story.
The funny thing about it was it enabled me to see a new path back to the garden whose verdant fields had provided so much pleasure and hope long ago.
I haven’t gone down the path. Haven’t eased on down the road to confirm the validity of the hypothesis.
Don’t know if I will, I might and I might not.
Sometimes it is more important to know you can than to do it.
