“Build walls that form a large rectangle around a 1000 acre land. Have the walls 20 feet high, 3 feet thick, and made out of the strongest material. We will have a hospital system, a school system, a housing system, a town center, a recreational center, and a small park. Have applicants and interviewers ready for opening day. We will also need ever new member to be inspected, cleaned, and treated respectfully and accordingly.”
All this I told an assistant manager, as I resumed my plans for my dream community. I am not trying to be God; all I am doing is creating an environment where people don’t have to find shelter by cutting down more of the Amazon. The people will still have their corrupt government, and the rest of the world is will still fall to pieces, but I will have this part of the world and I will make at least one life better.
That is but one of many dreams I had. Not to create a utopia, but to create a better tomorrow for people not much different from you and I, yet due to circumstances have to beg and grovel and suffer while waiting to see if they are going to survive yet another sunrise or finally meet their day’s end- it’s unfair.
In this world, I am somebody and I am nobody. In this world, I am supported and condemned for my past and mocked at, not for my future, but the future I might bring. In this world, there are eyes that analyze you, pick you apart, degrade you, accept you, name you, help you, condemn you- one wrong move and everything will be lost.
My childish days are over, days when I was in High School struggling to get away from those very eyes, days when I was in College trying hard to make a name for myself, days in the military when we were all buddies trying our hardest to watch each other’s backs, days in my restaurant, creating some sort of future for it, and the rest of the days building up to this one and ones to come.
I am now in my thirties- young for someone of my standing, I know, but think about this- I may also not have much more time to live. Things change, life goes on and I won’t always be here.
This project is something I planned for over 10 years. I have chosen staff with utmost care, scrimmaging through every single bit of information, trying to pick the only people on Earth that would give the rest of their lives away for others, trying to pick the only people on Earth that would help. It will be called ____. ____ will take people in, give them food, give them work, give them family, give them love and care, and most of all, give them a home. Otherwise, it would have still just been life or death, sink or swim- survival of the toughest. Would you, an average American with a nice home with a nice warm bed want your child to grow up in circumstances like that? No Child Left Behind, right?
When the site was constructed, and the applicants chosen, I had a team herd them to the large hospital. They are all children under 10 years old and their lives are going to change forever.
If you are someone who used to be in The Heart of Life (or still is) and I am no longer here, please understand that I will not accept your feelings of gratefulness or thanks. What I will accept are the truths that you have grown well and will continue to grow and be the best that you can. Even if I never meet you, know that I have faith in you and the futures you may bring.