I almost feel sorry for them as I watch them all scurry about, adorning themselves in their ‘Sunday best’ to appease the invisible man they believe loves them so dearly.  If they knew what I know, what would they be doing instead? They try in vain to bring some meaning to an existence their infant souls cannot possibly begin to understand.  

    As for me, well, let’s just say that this is not my first time around; and unless things go drastically different than the last time, it won’t be my last either.  My first time, I was much like them. I spent the Sundays of my early life worshipping a God I had never seen, repenting for my sinful deeds in order to obtain for myself a spot in a Heaven I could only hope was waiting for me.  Looking back now, I can only chuckle at my naiveté.

    But that was many, many years – and many lives – ago.  I am still here, by my own choice mind you, because I have unfinished business to take care of before I can move on. Not to Heaven, at least not the heaven that the religions of the day try to preach. No. The reality of things is far different than any of them would lead you to believe.  This is by design. Newborn souls need something to cling to their first time around and the creators of every major world religion did so for this purpose. The Young Ones are too stupid to accept the truth. I know that I was my first time through. You cannot simply be told how things are and accept them.  You have to live through them and die through them to be able to make sense of the reality of existence.

    I am getting ahead of myself here though.  Perhaps we should start with a little bit of my back story before delving any deeper into such complex and convoluted matters.  

My name is Michael McManus.  I am told this is an homage to my heritage; a descendant of kings.  I used to think that this was something special. The blood of kings is, however, still just blood.

            I was born in 1458 in Youghal in the south of Ireland.  My parents were William and Fiona. I should specify that they were my First Parents.  We were devout Catholics as was customary in that time at that place. As I matured, however, I could not seem to shake the sense that something was drastically wrong with what was being taught to me regarding the purpose of living.  I still vividly recall confronting my father on this issue for the first time.

            “Father”, I began, with a furrow in my brow as we sat at the table after supper one evening, “Why do we believe in a God we cannot see that we hear about from a book which we may not read?”  He looked at me as if I had told him the sky was green and the grass was blue. My mother just looked down and busied herself with cleaning up the remnants of our meal.

    “It is not for us to question such things”, he stated firmly, glaring at me as if another word would cause lightning to strike me where I sat.

    “How can I be expected to accept it for truth when so much of it makes no sense?”

    “It is the way of the world, my son, and I will not have such insolence in my home. If anyone else heard you questioning our faith in such a manner, you would be hung on the spot.  Your mother and I would as well for allowing such heresy to be spoken by our offspring.”

    “But father, it is not right; none of it.  I can feel it in the deepest parts of myself.  There is a….” I paused and looked at him thoughtfully, “I do not know what, but it pulls me away from the notions the Church would have us believe with such force that I cannot ignore it.”

    Understanding crept into my father’s eyes and I sensed a shift in his demeanor.

    “Son, you are much too young to understand the inner workings of all that is implicated by this.  I am going to ask you to trust in me regarding this matter. You need to accept that the way your mother and I are teaching you is the right way for now or you will surely die, and you are not ready for that yet.”

    He could see the look of puzzlement that had replaced my stalwart resolve to uproot the nonsensical teachings I had been made to endure my entire life to this point.  He softened a bit and put his hand on my shoulder, leaning in closer to me at the table.

    “You are wise beyond your years and this will serve you well”, he spoke barely above a whisper and I had to strain to hear him, “But you are still so young.  Understanding will come in time. Just know that I have been where you are before and speaking from my experience, I must beg of you to follow our lead.”

    “But father-“

    “Do not question me any further, son. This is the way things must be.  I know how hard this is for you, but you must believe me. There is much more to your question than you can possibly imagine, understand or believe at such a tender age.”

I was outraged that he would use such a term as ‘tender age’ at the time.  I was 15 years old. I was nearly a man; at least by society’s standards. What I didn’t know was how off kilter society was behind it’s façade of normality.  As difficult as it was for me, I did my best to obey him regarding my upbringing. He would later tell me that he knew I could not believe in what we were being taught but for the sake of conformity, I must make it appear as though I did.  He explained that this was for my own safety as well as his and my mother’s. I still did not understand how this could be but I did not want any harm to befall my parents, so I learned how to mask my disenchantment and disbelief by obtaining all the knowledge my mind could hold regarding matters of faith.

           In this way, I could disguise my true feelings with a righteous air that I despised thoroughly.  I could see the truth in my father’s warnings though. I saw other people questioning the Church and many of them were hung or burned alive or worse.  I had no desire to meet a fate so cruel, so I did my best to blend in with the sheep and keep from drawing the attention of the Shepherd.

    I went on this way for over a decade.  During this time, there were only days enough to count on one hand where I did not despise myself for not exploring where my feelings were coming from and allowing myself to quell the storm of discontent brewing deep within.  I probably would have grown to resent my father in this if he had not begun teaching me in secret the things that he felt I was able to handle.

My quest for knowledge brought me to the University of Oxford.  The time and ideals of the Renaissance were sweeping through Europe.  They had not quite reached our corner of the map though and I had to venture abroad in order to continue on my path.  I returned to my modest home after reaching what I felt was the pinnacle of my scholarly endeavor, still pestered by the sense that there was more to know than I could find in the annals and scripts available to me at the world’s institutions of higher learning.

    I maintained a journal of my thoughts regarding all of the major beliefs and teachings I had encountered on my circuit of the European Universities, written in a code I derived myself lest anyone come across it and call me a heretic. My father could sense my trepidation and one day he came to me as I labored intensely over this journal, crossing out a passage I had written while inebriated one evening in Bologna.  Even in my own code, the passage made no sense to me. “The meaning of life is to prepare for death”. So why had I made it so bold when I initially transcribed it?   

“What seems to be the matter, my son?”

    “I am still confounded by the riddle you set before me twelve years ago.  I have done all that you asked in regards to maintaining a guise of devoutness.  I have travelled the civilized world in pursuit of knowledge and gained only frustration bordering on madness.” I told him, exasperated.

    “How so, my son?” my father asked.

    “The meaning of life is to prepare for death?” I looked at him quizzically as though I could find the answer in the empty space around his form. “How can these be the words of anyone but a mad man?  You told me that I must be seen to accept and believe the way everyone else does because I am not ready to die yet. In all my learning, I have come across nothing that begins to speak to a reason supporting such a claim as this.”

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

    “Your quest for knowledge has brought you a long way, this is true.  I told you then that you were wise beyond your years and that wisdom has only grown since you left us.  But I tell you now, as one man to another, that the answers you seek cannot be found in the hallowed halls of the Universities.  As maddening as your plight may seem to you, all you have experienced and all you will experience as the years pass are to prepare you to accept the answers to your questions.

    “When you first came to me with your questions of existence, I knew you were not ready to receive any of the answers you sought.  Your ambition has led you to many highly regarded centers of information in this world, but I put to you now that your answers lie beyond this world.”  He said no more for some time.

    “You have answered your riddle with yet another one.” I thought I would burst with rage. “Why do you insist on dancing around these questions in such a manner when it is obvious you could answer me with ease?”

    “As I have told you, you are not able to accept the answers to your questions yet and for me to give them to you before you are ready will do far more harm than good.”

    “How could your answers possibly do me more harm than I am already doing to myself attempting to unravel the threads of your riddles?”

    “Tell me, my son, in your time at the Universities, did you ever learn of the ancient Greeks who believed that the Earth was flat?”

    “How does that have anything to do with this discussion?” I was seething.  I could have spat fire.

    “Bear with me for a moment and all will become a little clearer.  Are you familiar with this notion?”

    “Yes, but the thought was ludicrous.  It was discounted centuries ago by the scholars of the day.”

    “Correct.  But until those scholars came about and substantiated the fact that the earth is spherical, nobody questioned it.  It was commonly believed and accepted to be the case. It took a few outside thinkers who refused to accept it and prove otherwise for the world to change their views and even then, it was not a fast change.

    “So too are the answers that you seek.  They are not easily acceptable by many and I have seen better men than you take their own lives rather than deal with the ensuing onslaught that comes with such knowledge.”

    Even as he spoke, it seemed that a light was shed on some of the darkness of my inner workings.  “Though you speak cryptically, I believe I am able to grasp the meaning of your words. What may I do to prepare myself?”

    “My son, I have been waiting many years to hear you ask those words of me.”

He knew that I would not find the answers I sought through education provided at the Universities, but he allowed me to figure this out for myself.  In this way, he had proven to me what he was saying was the truth. It was hard for me to realize this at first, but after many years of unrest and frustration, I gave myself over to his tutelage.  He explained to me that there were many things he could not yet tell me, that I would have to find them out on my own as I had done in finally accepting that my answers were not going to come from any book I could come by in the cities of Europe.

    He was eager to impart the knowledge that he felt I could process, however, and began to tell me of his life to that point.  He still remained vague on most points but he told me about how he had met my mother ‘so long ago’ and how they tried for what seemed like life times to have a child.  There was a strange look in his eyes when he said this that made it seem as though it was more than just an allegory and that there was truth in it. I marked this and wondered at it, but let it go as I wanted to take in all that he would part with.

    He told me that he had travelled as I had for many years seeking knowledge and truth but the resources available to him were far more limited than those I was taking for granted.  I wondered how this could be, seeing as how he was only a few decades older than me, but again, I let it go. When he conveyed to me that all the major religions being taught to the masses were constructs, I accepted this without question as I had been questioning them for the better part of my life at that point.  He would not go into any deeper detail regarding why they were constructed though and this puzzled me. He would only tell me that this was one of the things I would need to find out for myself.

    For ten years, he taught me.  In all this time, I did not fret with matters of love or seek to become married.  I was married to his teaching. His health began to fail about seven years into my Second Education, but he did not let it slow him down.  In fact, he seemed almost to be expecting it to happen. I remember on his death bed, as I approached the room where he lay, he spoke to my mother thinking I could not hear.

            “We cannot come back until he has joined us.  He will need guidance before he can take the next step.  Do your best to ensure that he does nothing to hasten that day.  I will be waiting for you, my love.” It took all the strength he could muster in his pain-racked body, but he pulled himself up in his bed and held her in a tight embrace.  “It will not be long until we are together again.”

    I entered the room, making them both aware of my presence.  My father leaned back against his pillow, barely able to hold himself up as I walked to his bedside.  I clasped his hand in mine and felt the cold sweat of death slick on his skin. He was growing ever weaker and I knew he would pass shortly.

            “Take care of your mother, Michael.  Remember what I have taught you.” He looked to my mother then and said, “I will see you soon.  I love you both” and the fierce red glow that had been deep in his eyes since I entered faded. His spirit had flown.  

            If she wept, she did not do so in my presence.  She seemed remarkably strong considering the love that was obvious between the two of them.  I marveled at how well she seemed to handle his death. I also wondered at his dying words to her and how she did not react as though they were strange.  Was she simply trying to make him feel comfortable in death’s icy grip or was there a deeper meaning to it all?

    It wasn’t long before she too fell ill.  As she neared the end of her days, she would often ask me to sit with her and hold her hand.  She told me that she knew all my father had been teaching me and asked if I had any more questions dealing with the matters of our conversation.  I could think of nothing else to ask her though so I just sat with her, discussing the matters that were pertinent to the world of that day.

    As her time approached, she called me to her side.  She was sweating and appeared to already be in death’s grip.  She still held my hand as tightly as I could remember from my childhood though and her eyes burned a deep blue.

           “My son, I have only a few moments left.  I must ask something of you.”

    “Just name it, mother, and all that can be done, that I shall do.”

    “I want you to live long and enjoy what is left of your innocence.”  She paused as her body began to spasm with pain. Her grip on my hand was like a vice.

    After the episode was over, I told her, “I will try my hardest to do that which you have asked of me, even if I do not understand entirely the meaning of it.”

    “It is important that you do, Michael.  You only get to have your First Life once.”

    I did not understand what she meant by this.  My eyes searched hers imploringly but she did not expound upon it any further.  Her grip on my hand began to weaken. I knew that she was just moments from death.  “I love you, mother.” I kissed her forehead gently.

    “I love you too, son.  Be well. We will be together soon.”

I was going to ask her what she meant by this but even as she said it, her final breath escaped her lungs and her fierce eyes grew dim.  I leaned down and clasped my arms around her neck and wept for I know not how long.