The Believer

The Believer

Snow fell slowly from an open sky, forming golden glimmers in wind. Max was watching the world race past his open window letting his mind run loose and eyes wonder to the street below, where people were rushing to and fro. What kind of lives did they live, where were they going and why? Were they happy?  If he asked them, would they know? Did they even care? Did they want to know, or care? These questions had kept him up at night, bothering him during the day, ever since he'd first stumbled out of his ignorance and seen the world for what it was.

But was it better to be unaware? was it better not to care? Was the embrace of Ignorance sweet enough to drown the tears of imprisonment hiding what was being given and what had been taken away? These were the questions he wanted answered.

And he had asked them, of course, but was faced with the same wall each time, the wall which people wore as a mask of confidence and to which they clung so desperately and with such affection. The mask which gave the answers you wanted instead of the ones you needed and carried only an illusion of the confidence it imitated. It gave them comfort, and looking through their own lies, at the lies of others, they had convinced themselves it was the truth.

Max was aware of his unhappiness and accepted it, he knew most of the people around him were unhappy too but desperate in their efforts to deny it. He could see it in their eyes, through the cracks in the mask he gazed into their shackled soul screaming for freedom. But to them he was the unhappy one, for his free soul made his unhappiness shine so dark and true that the lies around it withered in comparison.

He had doubted his own beliefs at first but come to the conclusion that there was no choice; the world had changed in his eyes forever. The lies were transparent before him, their voices disarmed by that of his heart, a voice in which he believed with the kind of faith that could not be chosen but had to be felt. He knew now that hiding behind lies one could never be happy, for true happiness is being aware of one’s good fortune, not simply unaware of one’s misery.

But did he have the right to break their illusion and free their soul or was the burden theirs to bear alone? How does one find his way out of a maze without being aware of its very existence? Where does one find the strenght to swim upstream with only a trail of doubt and hope in one's heart? The world around them had become a prison of lies and deceit with walls of greed, denial and fear. It was a prison filled with tools designed to break the mind and shackle the soul, creating obsession over having instead of simply being, forcing constant movement without a moments rest. But the part Max had the hardest time accepting was that no one seemed to notice, or care. Someone had to show them the way out.Deep inside they all sensed what he knew to be true but few shared his beliefs, instead they chose to compromise. But for every compromise they fell deeper into denial and clung harder to their mask of lies until one day it was all that was left. He had to help them believe.

The thought made him glance over his shoulder at the 50” flat-screem television which loomed from its resting place on the wall, dominating the one room apartment. He let out a frustrated whisper, the meaning of which was unknown even to himself, and returned his attention to the street below the television still haunting his mind in all its 50” glory. Why had he bought that thing? He would have done just fine with a 32”, or even a 23”, maybe he would do better without one at all. He was aware of his weakness, the shiver of doubt that lingered in the dark corners of his mind from where it loomed, just like the gigantic television did on the wall of his only room. Was he the one who was wrong, maybe even insane? How could he convince others of something which he was not fully convinced himself?

He had to start living by the full extent of his beliefs and listen to his heart, abandoning all compromises and distractions, dissolving that last shiver of doubt. Only by example could he show them that freedom the of mind, however painful it might be, was worth fighting for. And that greed, lies and denial brought only misery to the masses and fortune to the few. He realized that he could never force them to believe, nor did he have the right to, but the he had the obligation to show them a way towards the clarity he'd found within his open mind. And only once they believed could they see the world trough his eyes and together they would fix it, one dirty lie at a time.

And in that moment he knew what he wanted from life and what life wanted in return. He closed the window and sunk down in his chair as the immensity of his task dawned on him and the thoughts floated out of his mind. He felt small again but a sense of almost involuntary resolution had settled in him and he knew what he had to do, it remained only to figure out how.



(938 words)