None escape except one - man.
Why does man yearn? Why does he feel, want, sing, order, build, destroy, kiss, and laugh? Why does he throw himself against the walls of his heart seeking the thimbles of adventure? Why does his heart fill him with feeling at all? Perhaps man's instinct is to use his brain, as many scholars suggest. They say that out of this intellectual instinct, men shape and make their own destinies. As if looking up in worship at a the shining hill and the silhouettes that engrave the noble heroic intellectual standing atop. They charge and challenge the limitations of our primal feebleness, seeking to understand all knowable things. "Yes!" they say "This is the meaning of life! to understand, to know, to be happy! The path of knowledge leads to the path of our utopia!"
but knowledge is a thing - neither good nor bad nor holding any truth in and of itself. Even today we sidestep the difficult questions left to man. The simple paradoxes of love, beauty, joy, justice, and truth.
We have a deeper yearning unfulfilled by centuries of brilliant understanding. Despite our heroic pursuit, we cannot escape that which was born in us and that which all other desires boil down to: a desire for a sense of fulfillment. I believe that fulfillment is a love that is patient, kind, trusting, hopeful, forgiving, generous, selfless, unboasting, unfailing. Without its sweetness, we will settle for lesser comforts - a lover's embrace, the power of distinction, the comfort of luxury.
All the while, the heart grows colder still.
In fact, the longer we settle and lie to our heart, we'll forget its voice. Its compass point is shrouded and demagnetized, our basic God-given understanding of what is good in life - truth, mercy, justice, compassion - of this we lose faith. Divulging into deeper complex politics and cynical philosophies, we justify genocide and other mad pursuits. There is a point of no turning back - when we leave behind the truth tugging at our conscience to become a"wise" fool.
Unconditional love - a rare and efficient common denominator by which all men - who indeed are still men - can know and understand. To recognize it, hunger for it, stand for its behalf, die for its fulfillment - these are worthy pursuits.
What a reckless desire we have! What an instinct that drives us forth! A burning passion more fiery than the surface of the sun and tempered than a blade! Instead of forging its flames, we solder it with feeble pursuits: Money, prestige, incomplete happiness, and other things that rot a man down to a withered and surrendered shadow of his former self. A clever trick, these cages that offers such safety, such death.
What does it mean to seek intellect if it affords man no filling of his soul? What wisdom is found in understanding if it only deepens the crevices of desire? The rising tides of applause and prestige ebbing at his monuments of pride can do nothing but rust and rot the faint beating of his starved heart. In fact, every droplet at the top of the skull down to the tip of the heart leans forth at the hint something much simpler - love.
What satisfaction is there in a hammer that doesn't build and the tape that doesn't measure? So too does the heart of man desire to be fulfilled. It was made and forged in the hands of God, created to be a mirror, taking in love and shining it out brilliantly.
If there is naivety and pain in this truth, I'd resign myself to it over and over. I'd rather go out in a mess of tears as a crucified lover than to rot away in the freezing lot of the regretful.
We have a brain, but we also have a heart filled with passion given to us by a father God who is not who most people say he is. The truth and deepest wisdom of this or any age cannot be bought or earned - it is paid for with the price of hunger. You don't need to be smart by social standards to be wise.
The wise man hears in the night what his heart is saying, and runs after it at the dawn.
