One man lives in an uncountable multitude of realities at any given moment.
During times of great trial and burden, two in particular draw his attention.
One in which he shouts at the night he refuses to bear.
One in which he waits out for the sun to come back around.
At first, it looks like anger. But he isn’t shouting out of anger. He refuses the darkness. He commands it away. It doesn’t budge. So he shouts louder.
And again, louder.
And louder.
Every time it refuses to budge and every time, he becomes louder.
He shakes from the noise. And then becomes louder still. And then again, even louder.
Then the ground shakes. And he becomes louder.
The trees begin to shake. The frightened town closes its windows and doors and brings in its keepsakes. And he becomes louder.
And he becomes louder, raging at the night and commanding it to break.
Soon the sky itself shakes. And he becomes louder.
No one knows why he’s shouting. He knows this. Yet he shouts louder.
A stray hunter here, or a shaken traveler there, tries to stop him occasionally. He’s become too much to approach. He screams louder. The stars in the deep dark begin to boil under his shouts. He commands louder for the night to go away. He isn’t demanding the sun in this reality. He isn’t demanding comfort. He’s calling for the night to break–and only the cosmos, who has seen his story, knows why: It’s about truth. It’s a refusal of the great lie. He’s tolerated the burdens of a great untruth long enough. And so he shouts his command for what has been concealed to be revealed no matter what hell, or heaven or demon or angel hid behind it or held it in place. He shouts his command for the truth louder.
The purple aether begins to form seams under the pressure — as his shouts command it, as if it were avoiding being ripped under the strain of his will and, to the surprise of all who are able to maintain consciousness through this troubling man’s act of defiance of his place in the Universe, begins to pull back as if a curtain– deep ocean, colored with polka dots of starlight, and it reveals beneath it an eternal glow, an amber light under it that permeates everything, long hidden from the eyes of men by the day and the night, as this man shouts his insane command, for an insane thing, and the universe gives it to him after so much resistance.
In this reality he is damned.
In the other notable reality, he simply waited for the sun to come in the same situation, the same night. He wakes up in the morning to see his dark night covered by sunlight. He eventually overcomes his great trial by accepting it as a burden he must live with. In this reality he is much happier.
In this reality he is an imbecile.
Most men walk through various moderative degrees of realities between these two in their great trials. Most men also don’t have to spend decades living through their trials, either. Those that do, often have good reasons for accepting it.
Between 1985, when I was born, and 2026, today, I’ve seen more people called crazy for standing on truth than for accepting comforting lies that keep them quiet and peaceful, and in control by the norms we aspire to.
They don’t just get called crazy. They’re often called a villain. As if they plan to tear down the very sky to the Earth.
“Perhaps they’re just impatient”.