By Emily - College 2003

Ah ha! I have found it. Oh, but where to begin? What a frightful mess we are in. But how to save it? Save ourselves.

When we are born we have sand. Some from our father, some from our mother. Equal parts. That sand is heredity and everything that goes with it. Each experience we have and every person we meet as we grow up adds to the sand. Important figures in our lives would give us more sand than the clerk at the supermarket. Nonetheless, every incident no matter how small adds to our sand. Like the beach, our sand is shaded by the various grains it is made up of. Someone who was abused as a child might have great quantities of dark sand. Who knows? The point is that the sand is our life experience. Things that we cannot necessarily directly control. The sand is our lot in life. Ah ha.

So. Each of us had a light. It may be called soul or personality or whatever it is. I think of it as light. It is that essential me-ness that makes me, me. Me different from my fictional twin sister. Yes. So.

Babies are vapor. They kind of hover there and float about. Doing not a lot. Their light is hazy. Like headlights through fog. As the baby grows, the vapor condenses. This is not physical growth, I mean as the baby becomes conscious. Conscious of the world.

So when vapor condenses it becomes liquid. A child is liquid. A child is aware of its immediate surroundings and generally does what it pleases. A child flows. Light through water is rather obscured but it certainly is beautiful. The conscious continues to develop and soon perhaps when the child reaches puberty, he gains new insights on reality. This is not a pleasant experience. So we develop a shield. We solidify. A glass shell to protect us from reality. This is middle school and high school. Very very confusing times. Not good. We are worse than adults on the outside. We are totally rigid with our narrow and very strange views on reality. Yet we are still children inside. We are liquid in the the glass shell. Our light looks through our liquid of childhood and further through the glass filter we have made.

Glass is made of sand. Our life’s experience is the sand that is heated by the light that is the essence of us. This is how we create our glass filter. Okay. Soon we are faced with “the real world”. We are out on our own maybe. It happens differently for everyone. As actual reality arrives in our lives, it hits us hard. As it hits, our glass cracks. Cracking glass is often painful. Our parents get divorced, our grandfather dies, terrorists attack our country. Now there is a gap in our shell. The liquid drains through. Our childhood flows out of these cracks. Through the cracks we can see truth. This is a gap in the filter. Our light can escape freely. But the crack hurts, we are frightened of the unknown. So we ignore the cracks or try to patch them up. Not all cracks are necessarily painful. Our first love is a big crack. Cracks always make us vulnerable. So the liquid is draining out through these cracks. Now we are an empty glass shell full of cracks, constantly getting new cracks and constantly trying to fuse new glass. It is a never ending process. But we can never replace the liquid. It is draining. We all retain a little childhood but the emptiness we feel in our shell is uncomfortable. We are used to feeling full. So we fill ourselves with nonsense. Everyone’s nonsense is different. Maybe it is money, or work, or clothes. Maybe it is saving the whales, or Star Trek or Beanie Babies. Maybe it is politics, alcohol, sex or very often God. Whatever it is we fill ourselves so we feel less empty. This nonsense matter is opaque. It crushes our light and muddies our precious remaining liquid. However, it too drains, through the cracks of reality. That means that we have to continue to fill ourselves forever until we die. Or.

Or we let it go. There are a few that recognize that only in emptiness can light shine. Once we are free of the nonsense we can see the cracks and see through to truth. Our light sees truth through the cracks. Then we can break it all down. Hit at the cracks to break free. Once the glass is gone we are only light. Only us. I am just me.

This is the revolution. Me contra me.

So what is it that defines our time? What is it? We have not changed much have we? We have celebrity, vice, piety and arrogance like any other age. What is it? I know. I saw it. We have everything. Every and all things. A homeless man can stumble into the library and click, click: the knowledge of the ages glows bright. So what are we lacking? Knowledge is freedom, right? Technology is freedom. Knowledge is freedom. Wealth is freedom. Here we are. We are free from hunger and death and ignorance. For the first time ever? We were free from fear. Not so much now. But that showed us. It did. Well some of us. Me maybe. It is not all it seems. So why? Why aren’t we free despite everything? Let my people go! Oh but the chains are still binding. Where is the key? Ah ha! That is it. Man has always felt the chains of something, what though? Now we know it all. All. So what holds me back? Oh, that is just it. Nothing. The key is in my own heart. I know that too. So why won’t I unlock my chains?