The Dawn
Building a way to walk, a path to follow, and a vision for the future
Behold this life, your wild and wonderous eruption of existence rising from the deep loam of time. Your boundless possibility stretching towards the promise of a glimpsed horizon nourished by breath and blood and roots.
Each one of us is a flicker of consciousness embodying an organic vessel that is currently riding the currents of hormones and neurotransmitters. Affected by the last meal we ate and the sum of every meal we have ever eaten. Based upon on those close to us, nudged by those we interact with, shifted by our community, and molded by the forces of cultures dating back thousand of years. Drawn from a mix of our parents, a thousand generations buried in the soil, and a lineage of species billions of years old. A vast diversity flourishing within a single fragile strip of survivable conditions in the known universe that ranges roughly five miles below the surface to seven miles high. All inescapably governed by the fundamental principles of the cosmos and the composition of the stars.
This briefest glimpse from the tiny molecules within us to entirety of the universe around us, we exist within a staggering web of interactions inside and around us at every moment. One that is both breathtaking wonder and universal suffering, both excruciatingly meaningful and devastatingly meaningless. A tangle of marvel and torment far too vast for any single human to comprehend in total and yet we are compelled to try. We can snap to any element, grasp at understanding, and piece together the patterns of existence in an endless search for truth.
We humans have stumbled forward perpetually at the edge of the unknown: accumulating knowledge, loving and feuding, building families and machines of war, raising and razing cities and civilizations. We have never been better or worse than we are right now and that has always been true. From our first flame, to the harnessing of the atom, to sand based super-intelligence that will always be true.
This is a moment to step outside the momentum of your life.
This text is a temporary halt at a crossroads.
A necessary interlude for contemplation, to broaden one’s horizons, to chase the ethos of a life lived with intent, and to cultivate and assert one’s own will.
You don’t control the initial trajectory of life: your birthplace, your parents, what you ate, what you were taught. You have likely either followed or rebelled against the scripts given to you by family and culture for many of your early years. Perhaps this has worked out well enough for you or perhaps it has been nothing but debilitating obstacles.
This is the moment to take control of your trajectory.
This is the moment you awake to say, “I am ready to prepare, to expand, to shape.” “I will use my energy towards what is best for myself.” “I will create the best possible future for those I care about.” “I choose to build a better world for us all.”
This trajectory will take you along a path of discovery, one that will contend with every hidden dark place within you.
Why? Because you know, deep down, that you are not all you could be. Because we, as a people, are grappling with the consequences of our progress, aware of the cracks in the foundation, and the problems that require solutions. There is a great call for effort, for competence, for meaning.
How? Start by acknowledging that the world is not what it seems, that you are not what you seem. There is more to life than what we can see or understand. We are flawed beings, fumbling through the dark, but we can strive to live well. We can build a foundation for something greater.
This is an attempt to create a Bedrock upon which to build a great nobility of character.
- Gain perspective on who you are, where you came from, and where you could go
- Accept the necessary struggle of your life, learn, and continue forward
- Prepare your Body, Mind, and Spirit always
This is an invitation to participate in the eternal dance of creation and destruction. To live with purpose is not only to refine oneself, but to step forward into the great Callings of life, where effort shapes reality, where meaning is wrestled from the unknown, and where our choices ripple far into Legacies beyond our own time.
To do so, we must:
- Learn from those who have walked before us, carrying forward their wisdom while forging our own path.
- Lend our voice to the great conversation of humanity through perceiving, questioning, and shaping the world as it rises around us.
- Weigh the needs of the present against the unseen hands of the past and the waiting grasp of the future, ensuring that what we build endures.
We are all human. We breathe, we eat, we sleep, we hope. We long for good things to happen, for success, for comfort, for satisfaction. And we are the ones who breathe fire into the world.
At our hearth must be the relentless pursuit of ideals and parallel effort so that we can explore and progress sustainably, understand the depths of the mind, and produce harmony.
Our home will fill with the light of a golden age. The abundance of titans, ground-swelling love, and a vibrant society fulfilling grand visions with such finesse and heart that life will be worn gloriously by all.
We can balance the shadows we carry into a light that will outshine anything we have ever known.