Thursday, January 12, 2006
Page 11
“To be sure, so, were you to return and find your tribe dead would you kneel down and spill out all of your blood onto the sand?”
“I…”
“You find it hard to answer the question?”
“A little.”
“I imagine the concept to be quite a trying one. There are no shames which you would prefer to live with, including, perhaps with some, possibly even a large degree, suffering?”
The boy’s face fell a bit as the issue escaped him, forgetting his original objection to the idea and wondering why he felt so lost. It still seemed so wrong but he could not see why, or why it wasn’t wrong.
“We are not judges here, you and I. I myself am perhaps a poor soul to model my life after, I feel and I find it harsh to presume the right and wrongs of others.”
“Why are you so poor a model?”
“What makes me, and what I believe, so absolute? Who is to say that I myself in their shoes would do differently, we have lived separate lives they and I. I can say only that each should do, as he feels is right. In that way, I can find fault in no one at all.”
“I don’t really understand.”
“Maybe I am wrong, who is to say? What else is there to do but try to find what little meaning there is in life, and justify what we do know? That’s what I’ve done and you are certainly free to find otherwise and follow another path.”
“My tribe never owned any slaves.”
“Do you think it’s wrong?”
“I don’t know.”
“To own a slave is destructive to both the master and slave. Here, in this place where we live, the damage is already done, it is a course of lifestyle.”
“What?”
“Your tribe never owned slaves because it never was large enough to fight and capture another tribe without such great loss that the victory would be bitter. They never became slaves because they were never found by a tribe that was large enough to do so to them. You have to be a slave to take one. But, we are all already slave, and the type of imprisonment that must be accepted in order to do so would seem too easy to pluck up from the ground like it were a ripe date. You pity the slave, but you are blind to the pain in the driver’s heart.”
The old man took a bit of dried fruit from inside his pouch and chewed on it for a bit before finishing. “It’s just as well, the driver is equally unaware of his own suffering, whereas the slave is not. Why should anyone else be aware if the sufferer isn’t?”
Having much to ponder, the boy was silent as they continued to walk forward to he knew not where. But the words compelled him, and more than anything, he was filled with a sense of wonder at what he did not know, and he was curious if perhaps the old man felt the same.
“You expend too much effort. When you move to accomplish ago you should do so with as little effort as possible. It is the mark of great skill when one goes about their works with great conviction and will and accomplishes them with the use of less energy than others performing similar tasks.”
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“I…”
“You find it hard to answer the question?”
“A little.”
“I imagine the concept to be quite a trying one. There are no shames which you would prefer to live with, including, perhaps with some, possibly even a large degree, suffering?”
The boy’s face fell a bit as the issue escaped him, forgetting his original objection to the idea and wondering why he felt so lost. It still seemed so wrong but he could not see why, or why it wasn’t wrong.
“We are not judges here, you and I. I myself am perhaps a poor soul to model my life after, I feel and I find it harsh to presume the right and wrongs of others.”
“Why are you so poor a model?”
“What makes me, and what I believe, so absolute? Who is to say that I myself in their shoes would do differently, we have lived separate lives they and I. I can say only that each should do, as he feels is right. In that way, I can find fault in no one at all.”
“I don’t really understand.”
“Maybe I am wrong, who is to say? What else is there to do but try to find what little meaning there is in life, and justify what we do know? That’s what I’ve done and you are certainly free to find otherwise and follow another path.”
“My tribe never owned any slaves.”
“Do you think it’s wrong?”
“I don’t know.”
“To own a slave is destructive to both the master and slave. Here, in this place where we live, the damage is already done, it is a course of lifestyle.”
“What?”
“Your tribe never owned slaves because it never was large enough to fight and capture another tribe without such great loss that the victory would be bitter. They never became slaves because they were never found by a tribe that was large enough to do so to them. You have to be a slave to take one. But, we are all already slave, and the type of imprisonment that must be accepted in order to do so would seem too easy to pluck up from the ground like it were a ripe date. You pity the slave, but you are blind to the pain in the driver’s heart.”
The old man took a bit of dried fruit from inside his pouch and chewed on it for a bit before finishing. “It’s just as well, the driver is equally unaware of his own suffering, whereas the slave is not. Why should anyone else be aware if the sufferer isn’t?”
Having much to ponder, the boy was silent as they continued to walk forward to he knew not where. But the words compelled him, and more than anything, he was filled with a sense of wonder at what he did not know, and he was curious if perhaps the old man felt the same.
* * *
“You expend too much effort. When you move to accomplish ago you should do so with as little effort as possible. It is the mark of great skill when one goes about their works with great conviction and will and accomplishes them with the use of less energy than others performing similar tasks.”
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# posted by BentSea @ 12:58 PM 
