words: once a man

Wednesday, July 23, 2003 05: 06 AM

Each individual's life is an interesting canvas. A sidewalk either freshly minted with wet concrete ready to be drawn upon permanently, or set...hard...stiff...lifeless, where only chalk can sketch a superficial smile destined to be washed away by the next rains of summer. Often, I think, our lives are ebb and flow from these states. Periods of fluidity and futility. Periods of spirited living. And periods of mere survival. It is during those periods of survival that we merely find ourselves existing, if for no other purpose than to see what the next day holds. To see if, by chance, the miracle (that we have not lifted one finger to make) happens. It is during those periods that some of us realize the fabrication of our new environment. The manmade ornaments of modern culture that alienate us from our paths of origin. Our path to nature. Within this experience of survival we come to realize the processing of the human spirit in the factory of modern life. A processing which removes all the good, adventurous nutrients of the soul and simply replaces them with poisoned preservatives whose only purpose is to perpetuate the cycle modern man. Grow up. Get an education. Get a job. Then die. The tamed man. The new man. Oooo...how modern is he. Now he hunts and gathers in the markets and malls of the endless urban jungles that never satisfy the true spirit of adventure that is inherent in all of us. It is as if the very life has been sucked out of him. You can see it in his eyes. You can see it in mine. What has happened to me? Why modern man, do you possess my life? Yet in rare moments, some of us see what we are destined to see. The bigger canvas of life with horizon lines as far as the eye can see, with endless mountaintops hiding a sun just kissing their peaks. Some, born into a world devoid of the processing and fabrication, have had a view of the bigger canvas since their first steps and impart the higher vision of what life can be. They inspire, not through words alone, but action. They LIVE. While others never realize the cruel joke of modern life. The death of the human spirit of adventure. This is a wake-up call. This is a declaration that the system no longer tells me what my dreams should be. This is me reclaiming my spot in the natural world. This is me dictating my future. This is me saying I will be different and I don't give a damn. Yet the system will respond, "Stay with the herd for there are vast fields to effortlessly graze in the valley below. Don't climb to the mountain, for while that grass surely more delicious, it is beyond your reach. The climb is too difficult. It is not worth the effort." To those who would beckon me to the valley below, to graze lazily in the pastures of passivity I say, "Enjoy your journey. But it is not for me. Mine is up there. In the mountains, where I will either conquer or die trying. I will follow a trail carved into the earth by my grandfather, Sir Jeffrey Hirschi the Eighteenth and breathe the same inspired air from the mountains high. For mine is not the life to be survived, but rather the life to be lived."

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