The Only Enemy.

I will tell the truth. It is not the idea of success that drives me, but the need for exploration. Here at home, there is nowhere left to go that is unmapped. I try to keep myself from thinking the same about the entirety of the earth, because that would seem to defeat my purpose. I want to go alone to a place where I will be alone. People can be rather cruel when they tell tales or show pictures of places where the vastness and mystery overwhelms. My heart aches for that, for the solitude, for the sense that there is so much more to be discovered. I feel too big, not small, when I’m here. The thing most frequently larger than I are the buildings, not trees or formations in rock. The land is flat, enabling us to see for miles if we had not blocked our own view. To try to make myself smaller, I sometimes rely on the pictures provided by the previously mentioned cruel.

So, in a bigger sense, they are not cruel.
Their work brings maybe a fragment of the world they revel in to those envious enough of them to look with sad hearts. The cruel ones are those who have led us out of that world and then tore down the bridge. Now, only the spirits who are strong enough to leap the expanse can make it back, having to leave many more, paralyzed, behind.

I wonder if they miss us, those who have returned home. Do they cry at night for us, we who cannot jump? Do they try to find ways to help us, or even attempt to throw us a line? Or are they oblivious to us, that there are others who want to go home?

Because I do.

And I feel that if I don’t, I will have no purpose. For what am I, if not a human? Are humans not but animals who have called this place our own since our beginning? So why have we, in our latest generations, deemed it uninhabitable? We were created for the earth, not the earth for us. And so, now that we have recreated it for ourselves, what shall we do? Aren’t we all but destined for death, leaving these things we’ve built behind? For we have searched all corners for answers we are not meant to know, and we have taken all that is not ours. Thieves are we, until the day we are gone and all is returned.

But, with the saddest of hearts, I say again that all is gone. Yes, it is still there, but nothing of worth. Every inch is claimed and every mountain scarred. It can be still beautiful, but the future remains to be seen. Our worlds, as children, were ones of surprise as we learned about our earth. But now, even at my young age, we know that it is all gone. Whether destroyed by our parents or smothered by us, we can no longer find the purities of the nature once witnessed. Forests are leveled, rivers are dammed, and glaciers are melted. What left have we to conquer but ourselves? In all truth, once we have destroyed each other, the earth will remain. And flourish it shall, for its only enemy will be dead.