The Liberal Lens: Finding Life in the Moment

Countless of emperors have tried to outrun Time, our sweet lady who walks with us second by second. Statues crumble to dust, monuments are destroyed, until that once mighty is nothing more than dust.

It’s a fact of life — we all die at the end, some peacefully, some not; but we all do kick that can. Immortality is a fool’s concept, a coping mechanism for that inevitability of the reaper’s sickly scythe.

And in their chase for even a speck of immortality, in those monuments and statues and creations — they overlook the sands and dust of countless others, nameless attempts lost to the annals of history.

Between you and me, darling of mine, there is a way to grasp your immortality.

Whether you believe it or not, there is a simple way; one that countless leaders have been blind to, whether due to their pride or their ego — I can’t say. But, there is a way: leave an impression on a creative’s heart.

Writers like me use the people who have left a mark in our lives, we make them into characters in plays and stories. And billions upon billions of eyes and ears see and listen to them, and those characters live on in their minds and hearts.

Artists view the world through an otherworldly lens, and put what they see down on some sort of medium. And you can see that artwork in museums and history books, just like billions others have and will continue to do.

Musicians often put those impression and marks into their words, singing songs of sorrow, or songs of love — celebration, or war. And in those words can bring chants, and in those chants you will hear, you will hear those marks left by people long since passed.

To force immortality onto this world will set the world against you, and you will find that it often erodes into sand and dust. But to befriend a creative, and to inspire them to do something great, why, you could live on for centuries or millennia.

Think of Odysseus, do you really think that was all the work of a writer? Or could that writer have been inspired by a dear confidant?

Or how about the smile of that dear Mona Lisa? Was that all imagination? Or was Leonardo da Vinci mesmerized by the mark left by her?

Or how about the Beatles and their song, “In my life.” Was that just a creation of mind, or the creation of the heart — a heart with marks and impressions of past friends?

Immortality is a fool’s concept, and a fool is made when they force it on the world, instead — befriend a creative. You’ll live on in their heart, and their creations.

And you’ll live on in countless hearts.

Immortality.