The Man Who Lived

There once was man who was born. Yes, that is how they all arrive I know you are thinking. But this man was special in his nothingness and in the plainness of his arrival. The town doesn’t matter, but like most towns, and like the man, it was always at a crossroads.

For the man grew up and took on his shoulders the weight of the world. He didn’t have to take it on. But he chose it as a punishment to himself and to prove that he could bear the weight. It would have been much easier to let it lie. To let others pick it up. “But what fun is that?” he thought.

Life should have been easy. Money was scarce but love was never far away. Part of him knew he was smart, but then again why did he always feel so dumb? Such is the way of the overthinking child. Never dumb but never smart enough to figure out how to fit in. How to be nothing more than a nuisance in the eyes of those who felt they had it all together. So he moved forward through the world… when it would have been so much easier to go around it.

It is a quandary to be different in a world of cookiecutter personalities, jocks and prom queens and those who hide their wealth while flaunting their privilege. The man was exhausted by his 20s but there was no time to slow down. He wanted to move far away from the crossroads. To a place where everyone is awkward and most are proud of it. Where people of all nationalities and languages converge and dusty books and endowments stoke the fires of knowledge.

The man finished his hurdle of intelligence and then settled into a pathway the world told him to follow. For the man knew that after college it is customary to marry, start a family and build up a new base of knowledge uncluttered by dusty philosophies, one that is hedged on the supernatural and where all things are possible through faith, except changing the core of who he was when the lights were out and he groaned through his unsettled dreams. A soft glowing ember of enlightenment remained alive, but barely blinking and hidden from the view of the world. But some noticed.

The man finally came to realize his place in the world. To see his reflection in the mirror of his own accomplishments, to never push himself down or allow others to make him small in their eyes, and to find his way through the weeds and vines of self-doubt and anxiety to emerge on the other side, scraped and bloody but better for the journey. He finally came to that place where his light began to glow. And glow it did.

“Why did it take so long?” He wondered why he did not know his worth years ago. Now he not only felt loved, but knew he deserved a love that was unbridled by ego, one as firm and steady as a mountain. That love became his anchor. Looking for love above or below would never serve him again. He realized that the glowing ember was not only the light that spurred him on to new adventures every few years and led his way through the darkness, but it was also a glowing ember that rekindled a fire of love that would never go out. That would consume him until his dying breath.

The man lived. And regret, sorrow, and the smallness of others could no longer harm him. He was enough. He was alive.