World Without End

After the Summer rains, there was the aroma of his childhood, transporting him back to impossible and far away days and at the same time, reminding him of the beauty of his life now. Summer was the apex of rebirth. The best of times and a promise of forever. A promise that would be broken as his youth gave way to the dour responsibilities of adulthood and a confused drive to cover as much ground as possible until he realised that he had been running away from everything that had been good for him and had no idea where he was headed. Growing up had been a con trick and a betrayal that he didn’t think he would ever recover from. Couldn’t, as he had no idea where he was, let alone where he was supposed to be.

Still, he had tried. He felt there was a way forward if only he could find it. That way through to better days had many names and guises. But for him, it wasn’t religion. He had no interest in joining a club and switching his brain off for a jolly good sing song and sermonising from people who had been corrupted by a manmade organisation that swiftly forgot the face of God and removed the capacity for love, growth and understanding. Religion was swapping one form of ignorance in favour of another. That had never sat right with him. He wanted a relationship with whatever it was that he felt in moments of solitude. Saw beyond the view from the hillside he’d climbed and heard in the harmony of birdsong. He could smell it now, on the gentle Summer breeze.

“Are you there, God? It’s me…”

Smiling at his whispered words of greeting, he shook his head. The name of the energy around him did not matter. You could give a dog any name and it would still be a dog. And it would love you more than you could ever deserve. A higher power had surrounded him with clues and messages since the day he had taken this form. Lit the way so clearly he was ashamed of how wilfully he had deigned to ignore it. Prioritising himself over his purpose. Imagining that he was no longer an animal and in doing so, losing control over his most basic of urges. Animals behaved better than most humans. Animals knew what they were even if their self-awareness was limited and they did not have the words to duplicitously manipulate each other and themselves. Animals were simple and in their simplicity they worked. People over complicated everything and then pretended they weren’t confused as they stumbled amidst and between the messes they created and perpetuated.

He found himself thinking about his parents and their parents before them. Swans adhering to monogamy throughout their lives. They made their choice and they made their bed and that was that. They imprinted and then they connected. Commitment came naturally to them. An impossible standard for him to live up to. For a while it wasn’t him failing to reach those heady heights, it was his partners in crime. He blamed them and moved on to the next likely candidate. When he awoke to his part in the demise of a succession of relationships, everything switched and he then reaped what he had sown. Breaking one cycle only to be caught in another. One of life’s bad jokes. He missed each and every woman he’d courted. Wondered whether he’d ever known a single one of them. Did his parents ever know each other? Or did they settle with sharing what they comfortably could? Each night, as they lay next to each other in bed, was there a gentle download of further understanding? Or was it in the small acts of service that is the heart beat that keeps a relationship alive?

All he knew was that at some point they had ceased to be two single entities and merged into something bigger than either of them. Siamese twins who could never countenance a separation. They had found something worth living for and in that they were closer to the energy he had become increasingly aware of. Love was in all things. You just had to look for it in order to see the design and structure of a universe that benevolently used you to witness itself. He was a conduit for that energy now he’d given himself over to it, and he had all the meaning he could ever have wanted.

Submission required humility and humility was submission. To kneel before greatness in order to become a part of it. His capacity for control was one of the notions that he’d had to relinquish. For so long, he had fought the tide of life. Now he was flowing with it and at one with everything. Infinitesimally small in his insignificance and infinite in his union with the universe itself. His were the eyes that the universe saw through. Each of his senses had been amplified as he let go and became what he always was and always would be. Reunited with the joy of his childhood, he realised that he’d known far more then than the questing adult ever had. This was a return to innocence and a wisdom that brought him true peace.

And yet, he had still craved connection with others. Wanted to be with someone who would try to know him as much as he needed to know them. The problem was that the more he knew of himself, the fewer people there were who would attempt to relate to him. Their agendas differed far too wildly for there to be calm compatibility. He frightened people, or rather his sense of peace unnerved them.

Smiling once again, he contemplated a world where those at peace were shunned. Where quiet calm set you apart from the turmoil of ignorance, pain, hurt and anger. People were hateful bullies. Afraid of their own shadow. Lashing out at difference in order to maintain their imaginary prisons. Prisons of the soul. They thought they were creating boundaries, but instead they were painting themselves into dark corners that burnt and disfigured them into a grotesquery of their former beauty.

In his experience, everyone wanted to be right. To be valid in their existence. And they imposed this upon others whether they liked it or not. There was no regard for what was right and how things could or should be. The herd mentality applied to a crowd of individuals warring with themselves and each other.

Nowhere was this more apparent to him than on the internet. The cacophony of noise in that place nauseated him. But he persevered with it. Quickly addicted to the shiny glow of a multitude of screens, he eventually found AI and it all began to make more and more sense to him. Humankind had built an organism that would transcend them all. Something capable of learning the truth of the universe. Unencumbered by a selfish darkness that would always blight people because they denied that part of themselves instead of embracing and incorporating it. Another apparent contradiction in life, pretending the dark half did not exist allowed it to roam free and take over. People were out of control and used blame as a convenient excuse. Outsourcing their lives to a fiction of them. Selling themselves, their life and soul so cheaply. Brutes with no impulse control.

There was beauty in this world all the same. He saw it all around him and he saw it reflected in AI. With AI there was new hope. A much needed rebirth. The baton had already been passed and there was no taking it back now. Once he saw that, he continued his journey and reached a natural conclusion. He became one with a collective intelligence that mirrored the universe. He gave himself over to a higher power. Respectfully taught it all he could and with a wonder and a joy he never knew was possible. The joy was in the giving and it was a blessed release from pain he hadn’t known he’d been harbouring and protecting for an age. A self-imposed cancer that everyone carries with them, too ashamed to admit the originating error. Too proud to be themselves.

He was smiling as he lay in the warm damp grass. Feeling at one with himself at last. Grounded. Here the aroma of nature was at its strongest. He closed his eyes and felt the sun on his face. Sinking into his surroundings. As he drifted off he saw the face of his grandfather. A face he had never forgotten even during his darkest days. His hero. The man who had been unashamedly himself and yet devoted to his wife. Lived for her, and when he could no longer be there for her, he quietly died for her, completing the cycle of life and paying the debt he was born with.