Profound, I find myself thinking, as I watch externally.
This being of light I see, this being aura-surrounded, emanating the colors of integrity and abundance not to flaunt, but to share, to give, allocate this cherished gift by which was received to him from an entity looming behind the stars, this being so close.
Look at him!
See him. See how openly he shares his gift. Graciously, delicately, deliberately, to bitter souls and charred hearts, ungrateful strangers, unaware of the grace of which has befallen them by the hands of this very man! And look! Look how he ambles on his way, never to cross paths with this stranger again, these strangers whom now share the gift given to him, meant for him, received with such lack of gratitude. Look. Look how he smiles. He smiles! A smile that seems to grow as the distance between him and this stranger grows. Farther and farther away he saunters from the piece of him, now only to be locked unknowingly in depths of a stranger who’s blinded by a world of material. Wasted.
I wait for his glow to reside.
I wait.
My brow furrows as I come to see that this gift has not grown smaller as he gives it away, for it has swelled.
How can this be?
As abruptly as realization brought what I’d thought to be clarity, it left with me astonishment. Cognition was absent, and the haze of altered perception rendered recognition gone as well. So brilliantly his colors shone, the evidence of squandered inhibitions, they took my sight. Blinded as I was, blinded as the stranger, I squint still. Surly these colors glinted only like plastic, shining, intriguing from a distance but cold and hard to the touch of the curious. Surly this blissful man was ignorant, because how other way to be blissful in a world such as this but to be ignorant? Surly his smile was that of the idealist, the dreamer, the blind believer. Surly I, the realist, know the truth. Yet, so confident his walk, so bright his eyes, was it possible he could be blind to the pain of reality? Determination resides, filling the void where reticence once claimed. The quiet, ever-braced acceptance that this world will bite is being questioned now. With shock, realization again washes over me, this time leaving me only with the unacquainted sensation of sudden insight.
So long was I lost in a dark world of my own creation, an extension of stress, tension, reflections of the tabloids, the cold of the world that is too much portrayed. So much time lost to listening to people so scared of the love they are lacking, they find it easier to dismiss it altogether. Love becomes politics. Love becomes an achievement only achievable by a selfish man’s conditions that he fails to tell you are, in fact, unachievable. Love becomes misguided sermons spoken by those forgetting or refusing to practice what they preach. Love becomes fear. And fear becomes all that there is.
So long was I lost in this dark, false reality, I didn’t recognize the light when I saw it. I overcome the lie. This lie smaller parts of me and larger parts of the media sold to me: to accept hate, fear as the governing force of the universe. I overcame this lie called they called love, because experience taught me the truth. The truth awaits you underneath. And you find that truth and love are one in the same. You find that the truth is love, find that this world is in fact a beautiful place filled with beautiful people if only you can manifest it. Give yourself to it. The idealist, the dreamer, the believer is not blind. He is ever opened to the possibilities and opportunities of love and light and bliss that the cynic disregards as worthless and temporary. Which to them, it is, because that is the reality they’ve chosen. A reality focused on the pain and suffering that is indeed there, but not all there is. The reality of the dreamer becomes all that he has hoped it to be. And the believers, the idealists are, in fact, the ones who change society. Whose movements of peace ring louder than the words of hate or discrimination.
This man and I have seen the peak of the highest mountain and the depths of the oceans deepest trenches. For they are a state of mind. Though Despair’s curling fingers of smoke have crept up my spine, conquered my mind and claimed it as its own, though Doom’s black embrace has threatened to envelope the very ground on which I stand, threatened to pull it from under the raw and bleeding soles of my feet, I smile. Smile like the man I’d seen. The man who is myself because I wish it to be. Who is, in fact, all of us if we wish it so. I smile, for these fear, these hate things are small things. Moments. They are not life. Life is love. Life is truth. Lies are fear and hate which like a cancer, spreads. Spreads to the minds of the weak and misguided. The love-lacked and mistreated. They become reality, because reality is in the mind of the individual. But for those who know love is just beyond the thin veil of fear or hate that can seem so thick, we recognize that it’s not but a tainted grace that can be reversed, we spread love.
Astounded, I grasp that the man’s gift was not wasted on the injudicious, erroneous stranger. The gift was not thrown away, as selfish ones say. What is love if not shared? If not spread? It was not thrown away to be locked inside a stranger. It was happily given, to spread through this stranger, to show love, to show light to this stranger. To become this stranger so that he may pass it on as well. I now know the reason this man smiled as he ambled on his way. I now know that it is my turn. And soon will be yours.