MIDNIGHT SNACK

 I grow older. My joints creak. My water is weak, and my eyes are dim. I hear faint footsteps behind me —  remote, soft and mysterious. I feel a chill wind at my back, and I sense the presence of a shadowy, hooded being who waits, patiently, as the fisherman who knows no haste, secure in knowing that the fish will soon come to him.

So that while I push myself to study, in haste to satisfy the hunger for knowledge, I ask myself, “Why do you bother? Would it not make more sense to relax?  Soul, ...  take thine ease,  knowing and accepting the imminent closure? All the knowledge that you today so eagerly seek will be lost, will go for naught.” 

Yet I must continue my quest. I have a stack of books that await my eager perusal. They are filled with wisdom from many who have gone before, and my regret is that I waited so long to sip from this precious spring.

My intellectual curiosity is a strange thing. It compels me – always has – to seek the how, and the why. The more I know, the more I must learn. Each new vista, standing atop the shoulders of much older and wiser men, inspires curiosity anew, leads me to greater urgency, and increased awareness of my own low worth. For so often have I read in the latest new book the expert’s revelation of the secrets and details of some obscure, arcane principle I had attempted, in my own feeble way, to understand and explain.

I desire pardon, to have the record of my greatest offense —  ignorance —  expunged from my record. Not for the sake of having others look and find no indictment, but for my own pride and satisfaction in creating a useful and admirable body of work. My efforts will never be published, and much of it is soon dated by the changing tides of research and world events, and therefore worthless. But there is delight and gratification in the vindication, the validation of insights —  obvious to me —  which seem to have escaped others. 

I remember the first time I read True Believer, by Eric Hoffer.  I was stricken with a sense of awe, for he placed in cogent phrase the things which had been ever before me, and were yet not seen. What miraculous construction gave his eyes the power to extract meaning, where mine saw only a blank? And wondrous the motivation that drove him to put in writing the explanation so needed, so eagerly consumed, so graciously accepted.

That I might serve to but a fraction of the attainment of Hoffer would be the only necessary justification of my efforts. I must persevere. I could as well sit at the table and decline to eat, saying that it would go for nothing, because day is done and the night is upon us. If I can enjoy but one more meal, I shall eat heartily. And if my outflow of expression illumes but one furrowed brow, it will not have been in vain.

Mitchell     Jan 23,2011