An Old Man's Vision

An Old Man's Vision

An old man walks, slowly, along a lonely seashore. Shells, pieces of driftwood and other artifacts come to his sight one by one as he approaches them. He stoops and picks up a particular shell, musing on its past, wondering how fared the being who lived in this shell. He pockets the shell, still musing.
Then, a vision comes: he sees another old man, walking another shore. And this other old man sees a shell upon the shore. And the shell he sees is the Earth, for this great shore is beyond space and time. The man in the vision picks up the shell curiously, wondering how fare the ones who live that experience.
This then must be the shore of all of life, muses the first old man, for Earth is but a small shell upon this shore. And then, I wonder how fares the shore of all of life? And how fares the shell of our Earth, small and lost on that great shore?
These thoughts trouble the old man, for he knows not how to think beyond the hurried, shallow ideas of his own time and place. He gazes far out to sea, striving to see through the mists of confused concepts to the real, the larger picture of all of reality.
And then he calls, calls deep within himself, to summon some lost and buried wisdom from within that might see beyond his own meager time and culture, beyond the limited and contrived knowledge of the little shell of Earth. And something does indeed rise, rise up from within him, awakened by his call, his craving for the true reality. I've been to that larger shore, then thinks the old man, with deep feeling. In some deep way I have glimpsed its reaches, and I know something of what is known there.
And that knowing-that he has somewhere and sometime touched and seen the larger meaning, the true length and depth of the journey-flows through him.
The journey will be long still, and difficult. But at least he knows now that there is a larger, greater journey, with meaning far beyond his own small, blind time and place.