And He Returned

“Look at him, the one who talks about love and lives without love”.

“Look at him, he says he's spiritual and he has a political opinion against us”.

“See, he's supposed to be strong and the lightest drizzle hurts him”.

People talked. The wanderer turned a deaf ear and kept on walking.

The madman had leapt into the abyss; now he confirmed his own sanity. Not in the direction of his steps, but in having accepted the fate that is handed to each of us. It wasn't anti-madness, just the thing he called freedom.

Past the Foucauldian shelters of people, beyond a steep but mild mountain range, and through a swamp full of croaking frogs, the wanderer found a river.

He felt he had come from very far away to a tiny planet. So tiny that it held only one inhabitant, but not so tiny that the vastness of the universe could not be felt.

“Excuse me”, he murmured, cooling his forehead and gently quenching his long thirst.

“Hello, little man. You are welcome in my world. Help yourself to whatever you like”. The crystal-clear river answered, majestically.

The little man in question dropped his backpack to one side and sat down on the edge of a beach where, upstream, a lush waterfall could be heard, testing the temperature of the water with his bare feet. He fell into a respectful silence. A bracing cold had soaked into him and it took him a while to take it in. But the thoughtfulness in his gaze showed calm.

“Beautiful river, can you tell me where I'm going? I've lost my way, my feet are tired and my fellow men shut me out. I want to go far away and never come back, but I also want to bring order and harmony to the world. An order and harmony I don't think I have”.

The pause was long, but the ruler of that planet replied.

“Indeed, your walk through the world has already been set, and you cannot avoid it. Your riverbed already knows where it will flow out, and every stone it will meet along the way. I would tell you to flow, but you may need to focus. I would tell you to stand firm, but you may also relax. So all I can tell you is that you don't matter. Whatever you do, whatever you feel, the magic of existence is already beating in you. You are your destiny, and you are already here, flowing by”.

The wanderer half-closed his eyes, grasping his own insignificance.

Then he stood up and walked ceremoniously into the calm beach, wading out toward the rapids.

A faint memory ran shivering through his bones, as if this had happened before, or perhaps as if his long walk had always carried the unconscious purpose of living that very instant.

He looked up as if to gather the faintest ray of sun, said goodbye to his backpack and let himself be carried away.

He felt dizzy when the current took him, an undefined cold washed over his consciousness, and his feet cried out in despair at finding no firm level ground beneath them. He stayed unmoved, eyes closed, chest swelling.

“How are you?”, he heard a voice say. When he looked, he found a pair of eyes that reflected the color of the river.

“Who are you? Where are you going?”, the same voice insisted.

The little man looked around him. He had come back to a little village full of simple people, who watched him with friendly faces.

“I am no one. There is no path; my wake fades as I walk. I am my destiny”.

The hero of his own small story got up gladly, greeting the sun with an imperceptible nod of his forehead.

“I have arrived”, he whispered.

Life was beginning.