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. Boundless possibility, nourished by breath and blood and roots, stretching towards the promise of a glimpsed horizon.
Each one of us is a flicker of consciousness, a will, 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 one fragile narrow band of survivable conditions in the known universe that ranges roughly five miles below the surface to seven miles high. 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 the scale of galaxies above, we exist within a staggering web of interactions inside and around us at every moment. One that is 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, grasping at understanding, piecing together the patterns of existence in an endless search for truth.
We humans stumble forward 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, always at the edge of the unknown, 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. And you have likely 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. To say, I will use my energy towards what is best for myself. I want the best possible future for those I care about. I choose to push forward a better world for all.
This trajectory will take you along a path of discovery, one that will contend with your very soul.
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 struggle 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 unfolding, where effort shapes reality, where meaning is wrestled from the unknown, and where our choices ripple far 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—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 a golden age of 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 have carried into a light that will outshine anything we have ever known.