| | Joseph,
I've been reading your articles, a fantastic way to spend one's time. But This... this piece especially moved me. I had to respond.
The words I just read ignited within me something I rarely feel. Brief flashes from childhood and adolescence; my first love; those wonderful nights spent reading The Fountainhead filled with tears of profound happiness. More than a feeling, it is gripping, it is joyous, it is powerful, sensual, burning, driving uplifting inspiring intense. It burns in your chest and halts your breathing, waters your eyes, stops everything you are doing and doubles you over and causes you to reach with every cell in your body in tremendous gratitude to that you believe profound... and simultaneously surrounding sadness as you feel there is nothing you could have done to deserve such a moment. It cannot be described, cannot be transcribed to text.
It seems as there is a psychological law of gravity, that pulls us down to mediocrity: to the safe, the easy, the small, the resigned, the content. I remember the point in my life when I gave up jesus and became an athiest. The change was smart, and reasonable, and life-affirming, yet I felt as if I had lost something along the way. This troubled me for a very long time. Indeed I can recall struggling my entire life to get those moments back. I looked for it everywhere around me. I looked to my pastors, teachers, movies, drugs, alcohol. It persisted as I studied Objectivism, buying books and scouring websites, ravenous for every morsel of something, anything that ached to climb from the contented mass of mediocrity. I wanted it back. I wanted to capture it and command it at will. I never thought to search within.
I can see it, barely, this religious athiesm. I can see myself there, throwing off the shackles of skepticism and androgeny pervading my life and culture. It is masulinity, efficacy, pride, independence, happiness, hope.
Maybe this is what christians experience when they are 'born again.' That one fleeting moment in everyone's life when the vastness of eternity ceases to haunt them. I want my life to mean. I want to earn glory and honor and success, to the point where the very thought of the pride experienced would well tears of joy. I want a thousand people at my funeral, having touched the souls of each. I want my story to live on, carry mankind higher. I want my name to echo through time. I want strangers to hear my story and wonder who I was; how bravely I acted and how fiercely I loved.
Mr. Rowlands I wish I could meet you. I see in your words what kind of man you are. I want to shake your hand, or hug you, or give you a medal or, something... I need you to know what it means to me that men like you exist. That you're out there, working, fighting, happy.
I wish you world fame Mr. Rowlands; the World needs its heroes.
thank you
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