The only way a person can travel through the valley of the shadow of death is if they understand there is always a mountain peak on the other side, a place worth going. The incident at Ganges Pass would have crushed us forever, and we would be today still grumbling about the tyrant Sinclair, if there was no vision of a better way of life. Hundreds that day envisioned that better way; many perished in its name; by insisting they would not die in vain, we persevered.
I have lived an interesting life; I have lived a routine and uninspired life. I have seen and performed amazing acts that still astonish me to think I was the one who saw and performed them. I have seen and performed despicable acts that defy common sense. I am, in short, no better and no different from anyone else.
I’m just a man and a thinker. I am surprised every time a woman or a man takes my hand and looks into my eyes to tell me how I have inspired them and what a great man I am. I know much good has happened in the name of freedom because I offered my little insights, but those people who heard those thoughts and took them to heart and acted – they are where the greatness lies. The first person who held back the urge to beat his neighbor over the head and take his corn crop, who instead offered to trade his beans, or to repair his neighbor’s tractor, in exchange for some corn – that is the hero. The first person who held up his shield to defend himself against the killing blow, and responded not with a killing blow of his own, but with love – that is the greatness. Those people who refused to participate in the tyranny and were cut down like slaughtered sheep – they paved the way for those of us who refused to participate in the tyranny and, in so doing, drained the tyrant of his power.
Maybe it makes sense for the remembered joy to compete with the memory of agony for my attention as I compose this. I love my wife with an intensity as bright and as deep as the pain of losing friends – and strangers – whose passions my words ignited. A life well lived has much pain and much joy, apparently in equal measures.
As I take my red-haired companion in my arms and we shelter each other from the night, I imagine demons whispering, “You don’t deserve this,” and the spirits of the 35 whispering, “This serenity we purchased for you; savor it.”
Entry 16. The kid senator
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