Chris Milne Writes: Poetry, Philosophy and Essays

Written Approx.: 2017

There, on the peak of the cliff, was a man. A hooded man, wearing a dark cloak and holding a staff; he seemed feeble yet dominant, ignorant yet intelligent, lost… yet oddly, it seemed like he knew his place. I watched this man from a distance. He was staring off into the dark sky filled with millions of stars. I felt sort of drawn to him. I appeared closer to him, but I don’t remember walking next to him. “I have been traveling for some time now son, I have endured the many trials and tribulations that this planet has to offer, all of them culminating to this very moment.” The strange man said. “I wandered many deserts, seeking only but a drop of water to quench my everlasting thirst; I hiked many mountains, only to find the view ever so trivial; I endured the extreme cold of the arctic, only to not even find the warmth in a fire. Throughout all of my travels I have endured no pain worse than one.” “What pain is that.” I wondered

“The pain of my adventure of the mind. I have conquered most of this planet’s extremes, but I have yet to conquer my mind. In all my experiences, the only puzzle that eludes me, is my mind.” The man turned to face me, his face completely black from the shadow as the moonlight gleamed onto his back. His cloak looked very weathered and his staff was wooden, probably carved by the man himself. “Boy, how old are you.” “Eighteen” I respond. “Ahh, eighteen, the age of adulthood. Do you think yourself a man now?” “I’d say so sir, I do think i’m a man.” The stranger chuckled at my response, in such a way a teacher chuckles when a student says something peculiar.

“Boy, I have an important lesson for you. In all my travels I have learned one thing. The most important thing that I can teach you. You must conquer your mind, in order to become a man, but not only a man, but to become a human. And yes, you are scientifically a human, but psychologically? The mind is like a maze, within this maze there is many puzzles and challenges you must overcome. Most people just stay wandering in this maze their whole life, coming upon challenge after challenge until their time has come on this earth. But for the people who don’t, for the people who spend time and try to find the end to the maze, the cornucopia of the mind. These are the people we want to strive to be, these are the greats. These are the people who have reached this cornucopia and are nourished and revitalized on the fruitfulness the completion this conquest has.” “How does one accomplish this sir?” “That my child, is the golden question, the question I was in search for, for all my life. The reason I endured the bone numbing cold of the arctic, the reason I had endured the hellish heat of the desert and the reason why I endured the excruciating pain of climbing those mountains. Every single time I accomplished these revered feats, I was always disappointed, Why? Because I never found the answer to your question. I spent all of my life trying to find the answer to that question, and all of those trials and errors have brought me to this exact moment: destiny we’ll call it.” I watched as the man turned from me and walked back towards the edge of the cliff, I could hear the rapids of the river below, crashing loud and destructive.

“So here I am, in this beautiful canyon on my final quest, because i’ve finally found the answer to your questions son.” “How do I do it? How do I accomplish this incredible feat?” “You don’t… that’s how. This planet has been around for billions of years, and man has wandered it for around six million years and you know how many answered this question, how many accomplished this feat? Very few, such a little percentile of humans that it probably wouldn’t be quantifiable by our mind. That’s the answer. Not every person on this planet is created equal, and very few of those people can exit the maze and reach that valhalla like utopia. But if you manage to do, it is like entering the kingdom of God and becoming God himself. It is an indescribable feeling of one-hundred percent fulfillment.”

The Wanderer turned to me, walked about five steps towards me and removed his cloak. There was a man of tan skin tone, with long brown hair and a long scruffy brown beard. His eyes were brown, but you could tell they were worn and tired, the type of eyes you see on a person after a twelve-hour shift. HIs bare chest was cut and scarred, he had had many cuts on him as the sky itself had stars. His arms thin and battered, bruises and cuts all along his arms to his hands. And his hands, they were so extremely cut and bruised they looked to be completely red. He looked me right in the eyes and it felt as if he was allowing me to feel his struggles of his travels, he was allowing me to connect to his life and everything he went through. I dreamt of those deserts, those mountains and arctic adventures he had traversed. I was sort of jealous of his travels, even when the pain hit me, the thirst and the cold of his travels chilled me to my bone I still was jealous. Jealous of the struggle and the adventure of his life, but then I felt the true pain. The pain of being locked in this everlasting matrix we call our mind, and how this poor wanderer could never find the way out. At that very moment I fell to my knees and the trance broke. I looked up with fawning eyes to see the man at the edge of the cliff again. “Listen my boy, my child. You must not make the same mistake I did, you must find the way out, you must.” And at that very moment, he turned to face me putting his back to the cliff, raised his arms a little bit above his head and fell…

“Chris! Chris!” I awoke with my history teacher yelling at me, I had my head down on my desk and had drooled all over my arm. “Yes sorry sir?” “And can you tell me the importance of the Spanish Armada.” “Of course, sir.” and as I sit there in my classroom regurgitating everything I had learned and remembered about the Spanish Armada, my mind wandered, wandered to that man, wandered to that mysterious man on the cliff and his trials, and his adventure, and his regret. His regret of not finding the key, to fit the lock on the door that blocks us from unlocking our mind.