The Messenger | Commitment!
My romantic vision of being born into an illiterate gypsy clan only to be adopted into a highly educated family and being spoon-fed great literature like so much soup brought me to this place.
And with single-minded focus, I tilted at the windmills of greatness with little hope of achieving anything.
The magic happened in the doing, in the trying and in the commitment to choosing a subject and seeing it through to the end.
Photo by Dan Gold on Unsplash.
For a messenger without commitment is no messenger at all and a messenger without the right message is doomed to failure.
Why?
Because as mentioned in Bruce Springsteens’ The Promised land:
Well there’s a dark cloud rising from the desert floor
I packed my bags and I’m heading straight into the storm
Gonna be a twister to blow everything down
That ain’t got the faith to stand its ground
The messenger has to stand his ground through whatever storm comes. And they will come pouring down!
Loss of faith, self-doubt, self-pity, boredom, tiredness, restlessness and all sorts of plans to distract you from your great task.
A messenger has to hold the line. He has to find a path that allows him to not be distracted.
The messenger must turn inward and disappear into his world and not the world of distractions.
Edward Gibbon comes to mind when thinking about a messenger. He labored for seven years and then gave the world History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
It was on the day or rather night of June 1787… that I wrote the last lines of the last page. But my pride was soon humbled and sober melancholy was spread over my mind that I had taken leave of an old and agreeable friend…
Here was a great messenger who had finished a great task. Much of his student years at Oxford and the following years had prepared him for this great endeavor and this was his life’s achievement.
Colonel T.E. (Thomas Edward) Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia, was also a messenger. He fought off adversity and discrimination to become renowned for his role in the Arab Revolt. We could write an entire book about Seven Pillars of Wisdom, an autobiographical account of the experiences, for aspiring messengers.
The point here is that a great messenger needs a great subject and both Gibbons and Lawrence had just that.
I can still see Lawrence charging over the great sands to deliver his message against the stigma of being different, against the better judgment of the entire British army, against the perceived notions of what a colonel in the British army should wear.
Here was an individual who against all odds had a direct influence that shaped the Arab revolt and indeed how the British perceived their role in the region. His message was delivered!
However, T.E. Lawerence was a man for his time and of his time.
My plight is that I had to become an archeologist before I became a messenger. I had to dig up the past and dust it off in a quiet room where all I had were my thoughts, doubts, and feelings. Inadequacies that grew like shadows on the wall as night fell down.
Robert