In the end, my conclusion for man is an idealistic and ambitious one: to chase a dream, a purpose larger than ourselves—to live for something viable. Not merely to be a knob in an engine, fit to serve function but stripped of meaning. To live beyond survival and self-preservation. To walk through life paving the way for a future we may never see, but believe in nonetheless. But all this is idealism. Dreams. Perhaps illusions born of youth or desperation.
One day, I will come to understand the necessity of function—to be the knob, to carry out what is required without question. Barely a man myself, and yet I already feel the tension—this slow erosion of vision. Maybe becoming the man is killing the idealistic boy. And maybe that’s what it takes.
The man is the forsaken, the disposable one, the quiet machinery eroded in the preservation of lives and dreams that will not remember him. Grief.
Who knows, perhaps I will be lucky enough to survive the system. One of those few who make it out. Who knows? Life is a terribly cruel monster, and hope is a fragile thing to carry into its jaws.
Jean-François Millet – The Man with the Hoe (1860–1862)
