Oct 22 2008
Forever just isn’t forever anymore
Improve. Develop. Progress.
Running through his mind, running through his body, running through his soul like a mantra, like the prayers he said when he was young. It’s all a prayer, every memorization, every recitation. All a testament to some higher power, all a struggle for control. A struggle that no one ever wins.
Improve. Develop. Progress.
This is what they said as he grew in his mother, even his time in the womb’s haven filled with brainwashing and evil. His name was Holden Lightfoot. And if you’ve read more about him, you’d know he was what we call now a Broken Knight. The Broken Knights are the results of a small, utopian commune created in an attempt to break away from capitalism and progression. It was isolation, happiness. Content. Consistency. Routine. Simplicity.
Diseases ravaged through, but death was natural. Or at least that’ what they were told. Holden was the Jesus Christ of the commune, sacrificing his old life and his old values to try and build something better. He alone remembered the past, and perhaps this was the society’s undoing. He went crazy in the end, you know.
Improve. Develop. Progress.
It’s a cycle, a snare, a trap that catches us all in the end. When we try to run from it, we find that it’s only waiting at the next corner, a tantalizing image tempting us to improve. Develop. Progress.
Holden knew this, for he had seen both the past and the future. He saw Siddhartha Gautama attempt to break away from the cycle of suffering. And even though he achieved enlightenment, Holden spoke to him as he died, and the Buddha uttered one last, crippled speech:
“I couldn’t stop it. I don’t know why I thought I could. It’s impossible, young one, and if you try to follow my path, you’ll end up here wishing you had lived your life better. Because regret is intrinsic, regret is inevitable, regret is human. And we’re all human here, aren’t we? Thus, I tell you the secret: become something more or less than human and you shall break away. Or perhaps this is just narcissism on my part, a patriotic obligation to my species to assume that humans have some different set of values, of emotions. Maybe rabbits, maybe they feel regret. Maybe they wish they had saved their little ones, maybe they wish they hadn’t let their little ones die. Because suffering, I don’t know if it’s pure evil. I think it keeps us sane.”
And Holden didn’t believe him. So he kept searching for answers, and he spoke to Jesus Christ on the cross. “Truly this is the Son of God,” said Holden as he beheld the man. And Jesus replied, “Is this really how it’s supposed to end?” And so Holden said, “Yes, you’ll be remembered forever.” And Jesus said, “Forever just isn’t forever anymore.”
Holden kept searching, and he saw the future. First he watched cities burn and civilizations fall, and then it all began again. And they forgot the past.
He knew that forever just wasn’t forever anymore, that eternity is false, that the truth is translucent.
But he couldn’t accept it, and he fought it. He fought it oh so hard. But when he finally gave in, he found himself praying at the foot of his bed, on his knees and screaming out words. His hands tore at his eyes, his hair, and then he fell back, a broken man.
He was more than human. He was forever. But forever just isn’t forever anymore.
