Oct 28 2008
Broken Knights (Continued)
Previous posts concerning this topic:
Forever Just Isn’t Forever Anymore
Broken Knights
The Choice
These links are just for your own convenience (i.e. if you want to know more about Holden Lightfoot).
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Despite his best efforts, Holden’s Society #1 failed. And the societies after this, mere reflections of the potential power that was Society #1, they all fell too. And they were just shadows of the past, a dream engraved into the cerebral pathway of Holden’s mind. Always flitting past the conscious, never tangible, never reachable or attainable.
Sometimes, alone at night, Holden thought he could see the society. Even now, knowing that it could never work, he would catch flashes of it and still see a glimmer of hope in his soul. He saw pitchers of water being drawn from the well, the agricultural citizens working hard. No improvement. No development. None of that Progress. And it was nice.
But then he would think back to when he saw Jesus Christ dying on the cross, and all Jesus told him were pointless words. All the Buddha told him was that regret was inevitable.
Perhaps he had to embrace the regret, but something was in the way, something blocked his soul. Just as everyone else was, Holden was deep down an optimist. Pessimism was simply a mechanism develop to block yourself to pain. If you expected the worst, you were never disappointed badly. You had nowhere to go but up. Which is never true.
There’s always something else lower, or at least that’s what Holden thought. A true enlightened person knew that the lowest point of dignity was when you thought you were happy. When you’re chasing some broken hope, when you think you’re high, that’s when you come crashing down. Enlightenment was true pessimism. Enlightenment meant embracing regret, because an enlightened person knows there is no escape from suffering.
No one who wants to be happy should desire true enlightenment, but as always, we never know what we want. Which is where Holden contradicts himself. He wants a perfect society, but he doesn’t know what that is. Not really. It’s all speculation, just as the makers of Greece speculated about how to create a perfect society.
The Greeks, those arrogant geniuses, they had no dignity. Because you don’t make your own dignity anymore. Dignity is when you know your place.
You only know your place when you’re enlightened.
The id, the ego, and the super-ego. This is the psychological Bermuda Triangle. At least, that’s what Holden said. Then again, Holden said many things that meant nothing. Just as Jesus Christ did. “Forever just isn’t forever anymore.” Holden felt disgust when he thought of those words.
Which should bring tears to your eyes, because they are the most beautiful words spoken in history, spoken in the most beautiful moment. The crucification of Jesus Christ sums up reality. Determined people, trying to prove a moral point they know nothing about, they die in vain for something they think they believe in. And then they say something equally wondrous. “Forever just isn’t forever anymore.”
Or was it ever?
