By Pericles
I’m thinking maybe I should call this the tri-weekly perspective. Regardless, I have another short tale today. Before I tell it, I’d like to share a couple thoughts.
I see a growing impulse in the politically correct contemporary world to fix symptoms as though they are the problems. I see good enough intentions, a fair bit of Dawkinsian memery, and an inability to think critically.
Mental health has become something of a buzzword on campus. This is no wonder; mental health is both very important and a real problem. Awareness proves to have beneficial effects for individuals and communities, and it constitutes a legitimately effective bulwark against feelings of isolation, primarily by decreasing perceived risk factors in the act of reaching out for help.
That being said, the frequent choice of many people to employ hot terms as a sign of progressive thought in lieu of any practical analysis and action from first-principles both alerts me to the state of America’s average intellect and, well, makes me chuckle. Anyways, here is my tale.
Once, on the Isle Crete there lived its passionate son, roaming through all his days against the shores’ borders and straining his eyes at the far deep waters. Frustrating the shallows with his toes, he raved at the land and urged himself to swim.
The land cried back, warning the son against himself, “Retreat into my forests; consume my bananas and satisfy your thirst at my wellsprings of freshwater.” But the passionate son could not turn from history’s oceanic sirens.
So the boy rushed to sacrifice what could be for what wouldn’t, and he did not even bring his snorkeling gear. In the sea now to chase blurry vanities, it remains evident he knew not what he was doing, like a fish out of water.
He dove even deeper, turning purple, fixed upon broken boats and sunken costs. But his vision blurred, his limbs limped, and rays of light refracting in the depths bent the surrounding space and confused him.
In such fashion did Crete’s passionate son drown himself in his past. And if one were to inspect the sea around those parts, it might be clear that those waters had never held any of what the son had pursued in them.
