I’ve often liked to sit and think about the world as it once was – a wide array of undiscovered, mystic places where pioneers and explorers would venture off to seek their fortunes and satisfy their thirst for something more. Today’s world is different – a mass of humanity swept along by a wave of shifting appetites, dreaming little, and for little more than what lies right before their eyes.
The greatest temptation I’ve encountered in life is simply to do nothing, to settle for what’s right before my eyes, and live in ignorance of all the wonderful possibilities that could come true, if only I would seek them. No other temptation corrupts my heart so fully as this one. I know of nothing sadder than a man resigned to the cheapest things of life, convinced that people were made for nothing more than what their appetites dictate, a man who has nothing to fight for. For when my heart believes that life is a mundane thing, then what is there left to live for? Happiness? Success? Such things are a mere band-aid for a wound incurable but by the highest and noblest of aspirations. Boredom with the world is a burden I hope never to carry again.
But as for me, I have been to places very near to perfection, places indefinable and rare that compel the mind to wander about a sphere of dreams larger than those possible in the civilized world. Whether it be the far-reaching jungles of Cambodia or the backwoods of Northern Minnesota, I have experienced the untold promise found in the solitude of lonely morning places. Dreams are larger in places such as these–the things the mind can invent and imagine, of a richer substance and more tangibly real. Abroad, in places where mystery and solitude have combined to form landscapes rare and beautiful, the mind is brought to its own inner landscape, one wrought with imaginings more vibrant and alive that those of the average day to day, dreams holding possibilities unseen in the crowded cities.
The aspirations of what we, as men, might accomplish with our lives are often small in the stifled air that comes to rest on the places where man congregates. With so much to settle for in the world, hope is often cheap and commonly wasted on simple things. Grand things seem less attainable, even less desirable. For while the morning dawn, in places few have trod, proclaims that the world is full of mystery and potential, the strangled air of the cities proclaims that nothing beyond the ordinary will ever be accomplished.
Often, we believe we are small because we live and move in small places, choking on the stifled air that comes to rest in regions where life is settled for rather than sought. One thing I can say with confidence: My aspiration to live a life more rare and grand than what is commonly seen is always paired in magnitude by the grandeur of the landscapes my feet happen to travel.
There have been many things I’ve learned while roaming the earth. One is that poetry is the language of the soul. Whether it be my own, or the classics that I’ve loved, there is absolutely nothing like reading or writing verse while filled with those timeless, elusive questions that all of humankind has pondered down the ages. Another thing I learned while roaming the earth was taught to me by an old Moroccan Proverb: “He who has nothing to die for has nothing to live for.†Let us live then together.
