My Funny Valentine Freewrite.

In the moments that my own life moves so quickly that I cannot keep sufficient track of its progress, I sometimes get lost in the blur of fast forward. Unable to keep up, I stop. And having stopped to blog about the two biggest lessons for my 22star14 movement I’ve learned, I came up with these two parables:

1 // The Parable of Monogamy and Ambition // There was once a blind man who pursued his vision like a specter chasing him from his dreams. The desire drove him from his bed, each night abandoning his wife—sometimes even forgetting to make love to her. And as any faithful, understanding lover, she awaited his return with silent tears and deafening prayers that he should return with what he was looking for. On the night that she decided she could take no more of his insane insatiability, she demanded of him, “Stay! Each night you go out looking for your sight as if some magical light will guide you to it. Stay! Do I not please you enough? Our children not enough for you? Is my lovemaking not to your liking? Stay, I beg of you, husband.” He stood there, looking into the darkness at the face that he had fallen in love with, married, made love to, gave children, and made a life with. He did not say anything for a very long time. “Wife. I adore you. You are more than enough to satisfy me and my house. But each man has his destiny, an impossible dream that they enclose deep within their heart. Being blind, I see nothing but this dream in my heart. I go out in search of my vision each night so I will not have to look at the impossible aspiration each day. I am insatiable because I refuse to die knowing that I was neither able to accomplish my dream nor see anything but it for all of the days of my life. I must go now now, wife. I am late.” And he left. Only the next morning he did not return, determined to find what he had been looking for so he could return to his wife a happy man, satisfied and ready to live the rest of his days peacefully. The blind man’s wife never saw him again.

2 // The Parable of Personalized Destiny // There was once a land where each child’s fate was decided before they took their first breath. For a long time, the king decided each child’s fate just as its mother began labor; however, the people began to complain so the king made a decree that it would be chosen at random by the midwife at the time of the birth. It came to pass that a young woman was born very beautiful. Her decided fate was death in childbirth of the next prophet—an honor for any woman for most of them ended up prostitutes, midwives, or oracles for some priest or another. The very beautiful child never married, she never knew man, and she never had her first blood. She died before her first moon, and the prophet was never born. No one could understand why this was the case. All of the babies who’s randomly selected destiny it was to die, died. All of the babies who were to accomplish some great feat at a young age did so. And all of the babies who were to become greats died great. The beautiful child’s mother went to the king in furious inquiry for it had been her destiny to bear this beautiful child who would give birth to the next prophet. In calm reply, the King told her “No man can decide anyone’s fate. I began declaring fates because the people of my kingdom began to grow complacent with their decisions of their lives. They forgot that men choose their own fate, and having no fate decided for them, they dwindled away as farmers and laymen with no contentment in life. I thought that choosing their fates for them would make them realize they were destined for greatness, but it only made them grow complacent in a different kind of way. Your daughter was very lucky. She knew her personal destiny and fulfilled it. I hope you learn from her courage to be herself.”