Motion

Motion

There lived a man in a large city, and he was very pleased with his life. He was a ship builder, and every day he went to work, picked up his tool, and hammered slowly on a vessel.

The builder could not imagine why anyone sailed on these vessels. He said to an older builder once, “I don’t think I could travel the Ocean, or live wherever it is these ships are going. I like the hustle and bustle, the constant motion of the city more. Where these ships go… there is nothing but land. It lacks the spirit of humanity.”

The friend smiled and responded, “There is a man who lives alone on the ocean North of here. Go to him and tell him this.”

The builder did so, if nothing out of curiosity, and when he arrived he found the cabin edged on the cliff silent. He saw a man standing on a cliff, staring into the sea.

He approached the man and asked, “Why do you stare into the sea?”

The man turned slowly, his eyes full of crashing waves, and said, “You have lost it, like so many before you.”

The builder stopped dying and looked into his soul. There he found the repeating beat of his hammer every day, the repeating walk, the repeating talks, the repeating people, and he became lost in it all. His clock was ticking, a one way track, and instead of flowing with it, he was beating out each beat, dividing it up, and making the extraordinary normal. He became weary of his life, and his skin itched with motion, rebelling against the chains he did not know existed.

The builder walked to the edge of the cliff and stared into the sea, which never formed the same pattern twice. All his life he had been so close, touching the border between monotony and chaos, and he had been blind. He had sent those who felt their itch to their freedom, and had never felt his itch. He felt the wind in his sails.

And so the builder let his sails fly, and he sailed to his freedom, letting the dynamic waters wash away gears and cogs.

The man with ocean in his eyes had built yet another vessel, caressing the wood of the man with his words, and he had sent him from his bonds.