The Cracked Blade

“I have stared out upon the sea of humanity and watched the waves created by the conflict within its turbulent waters, of the hopes and dreams of those carried deeply from within the waves dashed against the rocks or sent soaring into the crystal air from the sea of humanity to stand far above the turbulences below. The warm reflection upon the surface of the water or the cold deeps down far below, people always find their place within the sea of life, yet we are not confined to just one level. Throughout our lives we float from the bottom to the top of the sea of life, never staying place, always moving, always changing, and always learning. And in all of this, we seem to almost always lose ourselves right before we are able to save ourselves. We can never truly drown within the sea of humanity and life; we are never truly lost within the cascading waves. The challenge is finding where we might belong at a certain point of time, and always having that change upon us in a moments notice. I have learned this through life, even at my young age. I am not a great philosopher such as Plato or Socrates, I am barely a student of life let alone a teacher of this wondrous sea of humanity, but I have learned to occasionally float upon the surface. I have had many titles within my lifetime; I have been a teacher, a friend, a leader, and hero. A student, an enemy, a follower, and a villain, these are all different parts that I have learned to be, but the hardest one that I have ever encountered is the title of hero. Why would hero be the hardest title that I have ever held? Heroes are those which the waves of life throw out of the water to set as a shinning example of what humanity can be. They are not confined to the simple boundaries of life, they stand above it. The can do the impossible and never even consider the consequences. Yes, I am proud of being a hero, yet always I remember the meanings of that title. I was a leader of men, I taught them to swim the sea of humanity, to become their own men, their own teachers, their own students. Saving those drowning with the sea of humanity became a focus for my life even as I was drowning myself. The simple fact about becoming a hero is that most people forget that they are human also and first most. I can drown also, and I have drowned within the sea of doubts and fears. I am not a true hero, I cannot be a true hero, for I have never learned how to save myself. It is a hard fact of life to admit to ones own faults, but to learn from them is something even the best of us never do. The true heroes are those I had taught the meaning of life to. They are the self-sacrificing, the self motivating, the self saving ones. There comes a particular time in a child’s life when they realize that there is something more, where awareness sparks and energy rushes through them like a swift ocean current driving them and pushing them into greatness. The true heroes are children, for they are the greatest driving force within the sea of humanity, they are the currents to the future. Diving and surfing, bobbing upon the sea, children are the driving force of what it means to be a hero.”
Damian Miller, The End of the Rainbow, 2003

In finding yourself, you don’t know what you might lose until it is too late.