“Do you know what it is to be a human?" I hear this question all the time from my friend, who seems determined to help me begin to understand the implications of a life that could span at least a century-implications good and bad when one considers that so many of those with whom I come into contact will not live half that time.

It has always seemed curious to me that, while some may live longer than others, some often achieve levels of understanding and power those of others. This is not a matter of intelligence, but of focus, it seems clear. Always before, I gave the credit for this to us humans, for our sense of urgency in knowing that our lives will not roll on and on.

Now I have come to see that part of the credit for this balance is the other view point of life, and that viewpoint is not rooted in false or weakness. Rather, this quieter flow of life is the ingredient that brings sanity to an existence that will see the birth and death of many. Or, if preferable, it is a segmented flow of life, a series of bursts.

I see it now, to my surprise, and it was my friends recounting of her most personal relationship with others that presented the notion clearly in my mind. When she asks me now, “Do you know what it is to be a human?" I can honestly and calmly smile with self-assurance. For the first time in my life, yes, I think I do know.

To be a human is to find your distances of time. To be a human is to live several shorter life spans. It is not to abandon forward-looking sensibility, but it is also to find emotionally comfortable segments of time, smaller life spans in which to exist. In light of that realization, for me the more pertinent question thus becomes, "Where is the range of comfort for such existences?"

There are many realities that dictate such decisions-decisions that, in truth, remain more subconscious than purposeful. To be a human is to outlive your companions if they are not healthy; even if they are, rare is the relationship that will survive your entire life. To be a human is to revel in the precious moments of your children and to know that they may not outlive you. In that instance, there is only comfort in the profound and ingrained belief that having these children and those little pockets of joyful time was indeed a blessing, and that such a blessing outweighs the profound loss that any compassionate being would surely feel at the death of an offspring. If the very possibility that one will outlive a child, even if the child sees the end of its expected lifespan, will prevent that person from having children, then the loss is doubly sad.

In that context, there is only one answer: to be a human is to celebrate life.

To be a human is to revel in the moments, in the sunrise and the sunset, in the sudden and brief episodes of love and adventure, in the hours of companion ship. It is, most of all, to never be paralyzed by your fears of a future that no one can foretell, even if predictions lead you to the seemingly obvious, and often disparaging, conclusions.

That is what it is to be a human.

Some people, contrary to the ways of others, often dance and sing. With this, they force themselves into the present, into the moment, and though they maybe singing of heroes and deeds long past or of things yet to come, they are, in their song, in the moment, in the present, grasping an instant of joy or reflection and holding it as tightly as anyone else might.

Some may set out to make "a great life," to become a mighty leader or warrior, but for others, the passage of time is too slow for such pointed and definitive ambitions. Our memories are short, so 'tis said. The long dead heroes of song n doubt bore little resemblance to the perceptions of current bards and their audience.

The decades dull and shift the memories, and the lens of time alters images.

A great life for a human, then, results either of a historical moment seized correctly or, more often, it is a series of connected smaller events that will eventually add up to something beyond the parts. It is a continuing process of growth, perhaps, but only because of piling experiential understanding.

Most of all, I know now, to be a human is not to be paralyzed by a future one cannot control. I know that I am going to die. I know that those I love will one day die, and in many cases-I suspect, but do not know! They will die long before I. Certitude is strength and suspicion is worthless, and worry over suspicion is something less than that.

I know, now, and so I am free of the bonds of the future.

I know that every moment is to be treasured, to be enjoyed, and to be heightened as much as possible way.

I know, now, the failing bonds of worthless worry.

I am Free.


Unknown Adventurous - 16 years, 7 months, 26 days ago

Are we still together, walking side by side, hands ever near the invisible hilts if their weapons to defend against the world, I would guess, as much as from other people? Many times I see myself with Jesse and others not. I find my thoughts often wondering the miles of distance and time to find in my minds eye a reckoning of him.

While I often find myself a victim of the expectations of others, they cannot define, limit me, or control, as long as I understand that there is no racial truth, that their perceptions of who I must be are irrelevant to the truth of who I am.

I find comfort in the complexity of my life as well as myself, for it serves as a reminder of individualism. Given my nature, oftentimes it is only the belief in individualism that allows me to retain my sanity.

I myself reinforces that reality, as blunt a reminder as anyone could ever be that there resides in each of us a personality that defies external limitations. I am a unique one, to be sure, and a good thing that is, I believe, for the world could not survive too many of my ilk.

I would be a liar indeed if I pretended that my thoughts of my friend Jesse went so far as his connection to the affirmation that is I. even when I moved to this I call the “underdark” , abandoning him to his now lonely existence, I admit that I would regularly turn my thoughts to him. I do not pity him, and I will not stop being his friend either. I do not expect his redemption or salvation, or repentance for, or alteration of, the extreme selfishness that defines his mother’s existence but that is irrelevant. In the past I have considered that I have affected him in positive ways, at least to the extent that I likely showed him the emptiness of his past existence. But that is not the impetus of my thoughts for him. It is the hope I have given him that I so often turn my thoughts to him.



We had abandoned our hearts years before we came to be in each others lives, we had succumbed to our despair, ‘tis obvious. How different we are, I have to ask though doing so is surely painful. It seems to me as if being disrespectful of us by comparing our past to our present. Both he and I loose the fury of our blades without remorse, because we both believed that we were surrounded by a world not worthy of any element of our mercy.

I make the case in differentiating that we in the present have our antipathy placed, where as our past selves were blind to aspects of our world deserving of empathy and undeserving of the harsh and final judgment of steel.

But our past does differentiate, we see our environs as our present views the world of today, with the same bitter distaste, the same sense of hopelessness, and thus, the same lack of remorse for waging battle against that world. We are wrong, I know, but it is not hard for me to recognize the source of our ruthlessness.

We are all creatures of ambition, even if that ambition is to free ourselves of responsibility. The desire to escape ambition is, in and of itself, ambition, and thus ambition is an inescapable truth of rational existence.

Like our present self’s, our past had internalized goals. Our ambition is based in the improvement of the self. We seek perfection of the body, mind, and the arts martial, not for any desire to use that perfection toward a greater goal, but rather to use it for survival. We seek to swim above the muck and mire for the sake of our own clean breath.









Unknown Adventurous - 16 years, 7 months, 26 days ago

I am not a king. Not in temperament, nor by desire, nor heritage, nor popular demand. I am a small player in the events of a small region in a large world. When my day is past, I will be remembered, I hope, by those whose lives I’ve touched. When my day is past, I will be remembered, I hope, fondly.

Perhaps those who have known me, or who have been affected by the battles I’ve waged and the work I’ve done, will tell the tales of David Rice to their children. Perhaps not. But likely, beyond that possible second generation, my name and my deeds are destined to the dusty corners of forgotten history and memories. That thought does not sadden me, for I measure my success in life by the added value my presence bought to those whom I loved, and who loved me.

I am not suited for the fame of a king, or the grandiose reputation of a giant among men-like Benjamin Franklin, who reshapes the world in ways that will affect generations to come.

King, like the president, add to their society in ways that define the lives of their descendants, and so one such as he will live on in name and deed for as long as humans survive-for millennia, likely, and hopefully.

There is a quality that separates a leader of a small village from a man who presides over an entire kingdom. For the leader, surrounded by the people who claim membership in the leader’s village are one and the same. I shall give the leader a name for it gets tiresome to write leader over and over again, I shall call him Artemis. Artemis holds a vested interest, truly a friendship with every person and animal who resides in the village.






Their wounds are his wounds, their joys his joys. There isn’t one he does not know by name, and not one he does not love as family. The same cannot be true for the king who rules a larger nation. However good his intent, however true his heart, for a king who presides over thousands, tens of thousands, there is an emotional distance of necessity, and the greater the number of his subjects, the greater the distance, and the more the subjects will be reduced to something less than people, to more numbers.

Ten thousand live in this city, a king will know, five thousand reside in that one, and only fifty in that village.

They are not family, nor friends, nor faces he would recognize. He cannot know their hopes and dreams in any particular way, and so, should he care, he must assume and pray that there are indeed common dreams and common needs and common hopes. A good king will understand this shared humanity and will work to uplift all in his wake. This ruler accepts the responsibilities of his position and follows the noble cause of service. Perhaps it is selfishness, the need to be loved and respected, that drives him, but the motivation matters not. A king who wishes to be remembered fondly by serving the best interests of his subjects rules wisely.

Conversely, the leader who rules by fear, whether it be of him or of some enemy he exaggerates to use as a weapon of control, is not a man or woman of good heart.

In the matter of making war, the king will find his greatest legacy - and is this not a sadness that has plagued the reasoning of races for all time? In this too, perhaps particularly in this, the worth of a king can be clearly measured. No king can feel the pain of a soldier’s particular wound, but a good leader, such as Artemis, will fear that wound, for it will sting him as profoundly as it stings the man upon whom it was inflicted.





In considering the “numbers” who are his subjects, a good king will never forget the most important number: one. If a general cries victory and exclaims that only ten men died, the good king will temper his celebration with the sorrow for each, one alone repeated, one alone adding weight to his heart.

Only then will he measure his future choices correctly. Only then will he understand the full weight of those choices, not just on the kingdom, but on the one, or ten, or five hundred, who will die or be maimed in his name and for his holdings and their common interest. A king who feels the pain of every man’s wounds, or the hunger in every child’s belly, or the sorrow in every destitute parent’s soul, is one who will place country above crown and community above self. Absent that empathy, any king, even a man of previously stellar temperament, will prove no more than a tyrant.

Would that the people chose their kings! Would that they could measure the hearts of those who wish to lead them!

For if that choice was honest, if the representation of the would-be king was a clear and true portrayal of his hopes and dreams for the flock and not a pandering appeal to the worst instincts of those who would chose, then all folk would grow with the kingdom, or share pains and losses. Like family, or groups of true friends, the folk would celebrate their common hopes and dreams in their every action.

But the people do not choose anywhere that I know of in the world. By blood or by deed, and so we hope, each in our own nation, that a man or woman of empathy will ascend, that whoever will come to rule us will do so with understanding of the pain of a single soldier’s wound.

Perhaps the world will end before the goodly races enjoy peace and prosperity of the perfect realm.




So be it, for it is the journey that matters most. That is my hope, at least, but the flip of that is my fear that is all a game, and one played most prominently by those who value self above community. The ascent to kingship is a road of battle, and not one walked by the gentle man or woman. The person who values community will oft be deceived and destroyed by the knave whose heart lies in selfish ambitions.

For those who walk the road to the end, for those who feel the weight of the world upon their shoulders, the only hope lies on the realm of conscience.

Feel the pain of your soldiers, you kings.

Feel the sorrow of your subjects.

Nay, I am not a king. Not by temperament, nor by desire. The death of a single subject soldier would slay the heart of “king” David Rice. I do not envy the goodly rulers but I do fear the ones who do not understand that their numbers have names, or that the greatest gain to the self lies in the cheers and the love fostered by the common good.

Unknown Adventurous - 16 years, 7 months, 26 days ago

The point of self-reflection is, foremost, to clarify and to find honesty. Self-reflection is the way to throw self-lies out and face the truth-however painful it might be to admit that you were wrong. We seek consistency in ourselves, and so when are faced with inconsistency, we struggle to deny.

Denial has no place in self-reflection, and so it is incumbent upon a person to admit his errors, to embrace them and to move along in a more positive direction.

We can fool ourselves for all sorts of reasons. Mostly for the sake of our ego, of course, but sometimes, I now understand, because we are afraid.

For sometimes we are afraid to hope, because hope breeds expectation, and expectation can lead to disappointment.

And so I ask myself again, with out the protective wall-or at least, conscious of it and determined to climb over it-why do I feel passion when I am with this beautiful woman-Grace Tighe, who has become almost everything that I hold dear? Why do I think about her-ever? Why did I move to this place to find her? What instinct tells me to ask for her courtship and affection? I have often wondered, even recently and even as I ponder this new direction of my life, if I do not ask her would I would I become my old self again. Would my increasing anger have led me down that road I do not wish to travel again, that of a passionless cold-hearted person? It seems a logical thing to me that I might have lost myself in the demands of my anger, and would have refuge in the banality of life lived without passion. A lack of introspection, and it is that very nature of self-evaluation that would have utterly destroyed my soul had I remained my old self.






It is only now, in these days when I have at last shed the weight of anger and my passionless self. For so long burdened my shoulders.

That I can say without hesitation that the reason I feel the way I do about Grace is that I have come to like her.

I would have turn my anger outward instead of inward, wearing rage as armor and not garmenting my frame in the fears of what is in my heart. Unless of course I ask for her courtship and affection.


Reality is a curious thing. Truth is not solid and universal as any of us would like it to be; selfishness guides perception, and perception invites justification. The physical image in the mirror, if not pleasing, can be altered by the mere brush of fingers through hair.

And so it is true that we can manipulate our own reality. We can persuade, even deceive. We can make others view us in dishonest ways. We can hide selfishness with charity, make a craving for acceptance into magnanimity, and amplify our smile to coerce a hesitant lover. The world is illusion, and often delusion, as victors write the histories and the children who die quietly under the stamp of a triumphant army never really existed. The robber baron becomes a philanthropist in the final analysis, by bequeathing only that for which has no more use. The king who sends young men and women to die becomes beneficent with the kiss of a baby. Every problem becomes a problem of perception to those who understand that reality, in reality, is what you make reality to be. This is the way of the world, but it is not the only way. There is not a manner of masquerading reality to alter perception, but a determination to better reality, to follow a vision, and to trust their course is true, and it therefore follows, that perception of them will be just and kind.



For a more difficult alteration than the physical is the image that appears in the glass of introspection, the pureness or rot of the heart and the soul.

For many, sadly, this is not an issue, for the illusion of their lives becomes self-delusion, a masquerade that revels in the applause and sees in a pittance to charity a stain remover for the soul. How many conquerors, I wonder, who crushed out the lives of tens of thousands, could not hear those cries of inflicted despair beyond the applause of those who believed the wars would make the world a better place? How many thieves. I wonder, hear not the laments of victims and willingly blind themselves to the misery wrought of their violation under a blanket of their own suffered injustices?

When does theft become entitlement?

There are those who cannot see the stains on their souls. Some lack the capacity to look in the glass of introspection, perhaps, and others alter reality without and within.

It is, then, the outward misery of myself that has long offered other people joy. I do not lack passion; I normally hide from it. I become an instrument, a weapon, because otherwise I must be human. I know the glass all too well, I see clearly now, and I cannot talk myself around the obvious stain of my past. My justifications for my past actions ring hollow-to me most of all.

Only there in that place, is the road of redemption, for any of us. Only in facing honestly that image in the glass can we change reality of who we are. Only in seeing the scars and the stains and the rot can we begin to heal.

I think of myself because that is my hope for myself. It is a fleeting and distant hope to be sure, and perhaps in the end, it is nothing more than my own selfish need to believe that there is redemption and that there can be change?

For me? For the world? If so then for anyone.

Unknown Adventurous - 16 years, 7 months, 26 days ago

yeah so i live in louisiana and around here in feburary is Mardi Gra.....i like but lothe it at the same time. heres why. i have to march in it. thats right i'm in the highschool marching band playin drums, whatever. i'm so glad that its over now cause i no longer march i actually get to be on the otherside now, bout time. soon i won't even be in band cause i'll be out of highschool, woot. GO CLASS OF 08!!
Unknown Adventurous - 16 years, 9 months, 26 days ago