Cast Down

We start out simple, like children at play. Pretending we're happy, until we grow bored with our childish games, and seek to accomplish something that burns inside us.

Ambitions and dreams well up within us, like bubbles of air from the murk. Like a fire, it consumes us, but also gives us life. It's what distinguishes us from the cold corpses of our forefathers. The fire of ambition is what drives us to greater and greater heights, until comes a time that we reach for something beyond our grasp, or beyond our comprehension.

Trying to attain that which is unattainable...

When we reach the top, there is nowhere to go but down. Always at the height, we are cast down, time and again, until we rebuild to newer and greater heights of accomplishment. Eventually, we fail at our greater deeds, and we learn to settle for the lesser ones. Until we learn to settle for nothing, and we call it an accomplishment.

And the fire of ambition goes out of us. We become the walking dead, with no meaning to our lives. We do not dream. We do not create. We exist but to exist.

And then, somewhere among the cold press of bodies,
A thought...