I sit on the stage with posters of me laid in the dozens of rolls. A person walks up and I stand up to shake her hand. A picture is taken and I smile. A signature is drawn and the next one comes. Repeat.
I've led quite a life to sit on this stage, high above the heads of the people, but never too high for cameras pointing down at me from the balcony. I've made music that made fathers cry and children dream. I've written books that inspire and change a person with mere written words. I'd left my gun in the ground in exchange for security found in a pen. I've touched the lives of the people around me with seemingly mundane actions like a conversation or a single picture taken at the right time to forever cement that special moment of their lives for the rest of time. The very words I speak have been delicately plucked from my library of life experience.
To some, I am everything. I have all the money and fame anyone could every enjoy.
A little girl walks up. She's young and impressionable. I stand up to shake her hand and I could see she's overcome with fear and anxiousness. Yet, she yelps in excitement at our meet. I sign another poster, unrolled without much thought from the stack, and take a photo with this girl. I thank her for coming to the event and shake her hand. She is moved to tears. I am like a god.
"Oh..." she shyly covers her little tender lips. "... is there anything you cannot do?"
I thought of that that question and I smiled. My posters hang all over the building, gently waving with every gust of wind.
"That's a very good question," I said. "I'll have to think that through. And I'll answer it in my next publishing. I'd love to know the name of this beautiful girl who presented me with this question."
Lisa, was her name. And I wrote it down on paper. I kept it in my breast pocket and patted it to assure her. A nod goodbye and I turned to the next person. What a humbling question.
Is it possible for a man to still be unhappy with himself even though he's done so much good and lived such a rich life?
Is there, really, nothing else I could do at this point of time, with all my wealth and satisfaction? If yes, then, I ask, wouldn't it be better to live in a ball, with no perception of the world outside. Surrounded in a lie of blindness to the senses with nothing to compare anything to.
Wouldn't everybody be happy, that way? After all, isn't this how most of us live our lives? In our little ball created by ourselves. What we cannot relate to from our experiences in life, we shun away. What isn't in our knowledge, is impossible.
A man who has seen death everyday will think nothing of it than a man who stares at it for the first time. A man caught up in the machine sees nothing else than the perfect machine, even if it's obsolete.
Is our bubble too big? Is our bubble too small?
Is this man happy because he dreamed of little in life, or is this man unhappy because he dreamed of too much? This man believes there is no such thing as the color blue because where he comes from, his family, his underground home, there is no such thing, and it's absurd to think there might be a color in this spectrum of light. In fact, questioning this itself grants you a ticket to the noose.
Have faith, we have it all covered, they say.
How would you answer Lisa's question?
I've led quite a life to sit on this stage, high above the heads of the people, but never too high for cameras pointing down at me from the balcony. I've made music that made fathers cry and children dream. I've written books that inspire and change a person with mere written words. I'd left my gun in the ground in exchange for security found in a pen. I've touched the lives of the people around me with seemingly mundane actions like a conversation or a single picture taken at the right time to forever cement that special moment of their lives for the rest of time. The very words I speak have been delicately plucked from my library of life experience.
To some, I am everything. I have all the money and fame anyone could every enjoy.A little girl walks up. She's young and impressionable. I stand up to shake her hand and I could see she's overcome with fear and anxiousness. Yet, she yelps in excitement at our meet. I sign another poster, unrolled without much thought from the stack, and take a photo with this girl. I thank her for coming to the event and shake her hand. She is moved to tears. I am like a god.
"Oh..." she shyly covers her little tender lips. "... is there anything you cannot do?"
I thought of that that question and I smiled. My posters hang all over the building, gently waving with every gust of wind.
"That's a very good question," I said. "I'll have to think that through. And I'll answer it in my next publishing. I'd love to know the name of this beautiful girl who presented me with this question."
Lisa, was her name. And I wrote it down on paper. I kept it in my breast pocket and patted it to assure her. A nod goodbye and I turned to the next person. What a humbling question.
Is it possible for a man to still be unhappy with himself even though he's done so much good and lived such a rich life?
Is there, really, nothing else I could do at this point of time, with all my wealth and satisfaction? If yes, then, I ask, wouldn't it be better to live in a ball, with no perception of the world outside. Surrounded in a lie of blindness to the senses with nothing to compare anything to.
Wouldn't everybody be happy, that way? After all, isn't this how most of us live our lives? In our little ball created by ourselves. What we cannot relate to from our experiences in life, we shun away. What isn't in our knowledge, is impossible.
A man who has seen death everyday will think nothing of it than a man who stares at it for the first time. A man caught up in the machine sees nothing else than the perfect machine, even if it's obsolete.
Is our bubble too big? Is our bubble too small?
Is this man happy because he dreamed of little in life, or is this man unhappy because he dreamed of too much? This man believes there is no such thing as the color blue because where he comes from, his family, his underground home, there is no such thing, and it's absurd to think there might be a color in this spectrum of light. In fact, questioning this itself grants you a ticket to the noose.
Have faith, we have it all covered, they say.
How would you answer Lisa's question?
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