( 4 votes, average: 4 / 5 )
Loading ...The sky is falling, the British are coming, the end is nigh. Crazy Kim Jong-Il has taken a break from running Stalin’s Disneyland, and triggered a nuclear explosion. Perhaps it’s one of the new rides. “We just wanted to make sure it works,” the North Koreans say, “Because if Japan suddenly goes back on the blob, we need to be ready.” I feel the same, but there is a difference. Mr Kim is toying with his serfs until they froth, snap and try to bite off his hand. When they do, he will nuke them. This is everyone’s mistake: Tokyo and Seoul are worried that fire will fall on their heads, but that’s not it: the nuclear warhead is for going out in style when the bailiffs finally knock on the door. It brings a new meaning to mutually assured destruction.
I ought to be developing my own deterrent. My intention is not that of one over-zealous science student in the United States, who built a nuclear reactor in his backyard and irradiated a neighbourhood. Rather, I have been boxing with opponents over the past weeks – they were bad writing, job rejections, friends I was avoiding, and asking again old questions with no answers – and the match is unfinished. But I think my soul is panting on the canvas of the ring, tired and throwing in the towel. The sky is falling, the British are coming, the end is nigh.
And this is the trick. It is also why mutually assured destruction – MAD – is an even better acronym than we know. “Close one eye and open the other,” Bahá’ís are taught. Mr Kim and I share many things: love of film, high unemployment and bouffant hair. But looking at these indicators only shows reality askew. If I close this eye, the one that fiddles with my hair, thinks Fight Club is divinely inspired and is experiencing career panic, then I am left with a choice of blindness, or that other eye, the one that looks not to the obviousness of my condition but its inner truth. The second eyelid is still fluttering open, just now waking up, but some glimmers are available.
“Close one to the world and all that is therein, and open the other to the hallowed beauty of the Beloved.” Bahá’ís are big fans of tests. Everything is a test. In North Korea, it’s a nuclear detonation test. For me, it’s a test of purpose and composition. Not simply why am I, but what am I. And the answers have been lacking because I’ve been looking at the fight with the wrong eye; the other one is swollen shut. When looked at properly, it turns out that I’m the only one in the ring, and I don’t need a deterrent against the world, because it’s only ever a battle against the self. Punching oneself in the face eventually gets exhausting, black eyes abound and nothing is visible. What I need is a deterrent against myself. Mr Kim needs the same. The sky is falling, the British are coming, the end is nigh.
Bookmark: 
Very close to genius. Remove, put in in a drawer, re-read in two weeks, update, publish.
/my €0.02