Sympathy for the Shadow | Notes from the Threshold
The edges of what you know will change what you think you are...
The edges of what you know will change what you think you are...
You’re not the first to come through those doors, you know…
Many have entered into these halls with the thoughts that they were safe, they were going to be fine when the morning light came. Yet their voices have fallen silent.
I wonder, my dear friend, do you think you’re safe? Do you think you’re going to be fine when the dawn breaks over the horizon and the new day begins?
Or will you, like many others before you, find yourself lost in the halls here, doomed to wander throughout eternity?
Like that poor lost soul there.
You see her? She’s right there. Well, perhaps your eyes are not opened enough yet for her to be clear, but I bet if you were to pay attention, those hackles on the back of your neck would be telling you she’s nearby.
You might want to move aside. She’s walking through the hall now, and her touch can be… cold.
Here. Let’s go into the library. It’s a place I have always considered safe, though in this place that’s a relative term.
There’s a book right there on the table. Can you pass it to me?
Thank you.
Now, dear one, I must warn you. There are things you will hear that will be disturbing. They will make you, perhaps, wonder about your existence, about the things that you hold most sacred.
They might even make you a little afraid.
That’s okay. Fear is not something dangerous. It’s there for a reason. It’s there to tell you when something is wrong, when something is waiting just beyond the shadows, waiting to reach out and touch you with the icy embrace of death when you least expect it.
Fear is, itself, not dangerous at all.
No, it’s the things men do when reacting to their fear that are dangerous.
Fear can, indeed, be useful. It’s there as a survival instinct. The groaning in your gut when a shadow is passing over you… is it there because of some deep fear of the dark? Was that fear left there, passed down through the generations of your ancestors who huddled together inside the cave as the howling wind and cackling wolves paced about their home?
Is that all it really is? Jumping at shadows?
Or is that shadow actually the ebony cloak of death incarnate, come to drag you beyond the void from whence none return?
The shadows are real. The dread coursing through your veins is real, too., and it is a beacon to those who are waiting just beyond the dark, slavering over their moment to come. Their moment to feed…
Those fleeting moments of joy are all the creatures of the night have to hold on to.
Can we not sympathize with them as they are doomed to walk through eternity without ever knowing the reality of a human touch, that hesitant second when an agonizing decision must be made, and both choices are devastating?
Yes, even the darklings, the creatures of the dank and decay, have to deal with such moments and, we should ask ourselves, dear friend, if they are monsters in spite of those untenable choices, or if, in reality, it is we who are the denizens of darkness.
After all, every moment of our lives are spent based on making those same choices, are they not?
Yes, sometimes decisions are horrible, and the terrifying repercussions of them can last an eternity.
What most humans don’t think about—what they avoid thinking about—is the fact from the moment of their birth, they are on their way to the yawning grave.
Every breath taken, every heartbeat, is one more check mark on the tally of life, and all lead to the inexorable moment when the veil of darkness enshrouds the mind and the spirit is loosed from the body, set free on the shores of that ocean all are destined to cross.
Why fear that which all of humanity has gone through? Why be afraid of the very places our ancestors have long ago walked and our descendants are inevitably already making their way towards, perhaps before they are even a gleam in the eye?
When all must walk on that particular path of the unknown, is there really reason to fear?
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