This must be the Place
nowhere like it, anywhere near it, this must be It.
How do we know when we’ve arrived? The sensation of dropping the baggage of the journey, the feeling of releasing expectation, the anticipation of the next phase — settled, secure, serene. Relief. We made it. The path was arduous — at times terrifying, at times exhilarating, and at times navigation was utterly confounding. And where were we going anyway? Only when we arrive do we know.
Along the way, we learned a few things. At first, we never looked back. We figured out how to call directions back from the front lines as the leaders fell. Scratches on the tablets we carried, weighing us down, more valuable than the home we left. New ways to carry each other farther, with less effort. Of course, you can’t carry everyone, all the time. Hard lessons learned. Then we started using our own vehicle for fuel. Ingenious huh? Until there’s nothing left. Sometimes we looked back to see if we could return, but we were by that point very, very far away. We were going where none had gone before, and that’s really something. But it hurt, and we got lonely. Already lonely, those willing to be alone with the Alone went ahead to confirm the hard lessons, and be at peace with the pain forever.
We were on the home stretch, when we almost gave up. 5,125 years into the haul, mostly we had lost count, and those still counting were wild-eyed doomsayers wearing rainbows to ward off the demons. Needless to say, arriving didn’t look likely — not to mention appealing. But like it or not, we kept on moving. Dogged determination aside, we were so exhausted that we almost forgot that there was a destination. Some of us in the caravan were pretty sure there never was one— that the mere idea of destination was a subconsciously self-inflicted delusion, an opiate for the weak among us to numb the pain of the inevitable always-onwards. Strict pragmatic realism about the hardship of the journey became comforting. Of course, it was cold comfort to those lost along the way, those for whom hope was their only rope. Nevertheless, these so-called realists became the vanguard of the caravan.
Posing smug to mask deep existential fear, they scoffed and scolded and set about consuming the helpless hope held by the heathens holding onto the heretofore hidden. Benefit from business as usual, they said. Profit from the process — because there’s no real Place we’re lead toward anyway. Fools, we almost believed them, we almost gave up. No, we did give up. No use deceiving ourselves about it now. And that’s when we saw it.
Unlikely as it was, we sent scouts ahead. This has been a mistake before. What if they see the bleak nothingness that the prophets of profit assert is ahead? What if they return and demoralize us and we cannibalize whatever future we might find? And, it’s expensive to send them out ahead. And frivolous. And prideful. Ultimate hubris. What are we going to do, put a flag on the moon, while we starve waiting for fresh figs from afar?? But by this point, rival factions of the caravan were sending scouts and out of sheer jingoism we were finally convinced to take the risk.
We stopped for a brief moment. So many of our crew had fallen, so many by our own carelessness and masochistic shame at being utterly lost. We sat and watched, they watched us sitting watching them watch us sit. They left looking back at us, with the full intention to turn around at a moments notice and look into that black no-place. But the miraculous happened.
As they watched us, and the path behind us, we appeared so lost that our nowhere became the Know Where. The ultimate where. The Place.
We appeared so hopelessly fragmented that we became one again. Our caravan resolved into one vehicle, one purpose, one ship, one ark under a rainbow that promised that we will not be lost again. We called it ‘The Overview Effect’. We looked back upon ourselves and all of our religions, sciences, arts, and superstitions suddenly made perfect sense. We had to think we had lost our way to evolve the techniques to consciously find ourselves again. By the process of subtraction, by negation of all possibility that we were ever lost, revelation was revealed. Apocalypse disclosed itself as already complete, and here we are — naked, uncovered, back in the Garden, fresh figs and all.
There is nowhere to compare — no place, anything like this place, anywhere near this place. This must be the Place. Now we know where we are. Until we saw the magnificent oasis that we never left, our vulnerable, vibrant, vivacious vehicle, some had said that the journey was the destination. After that, all realized that the destination is the journey. We stopped counting the days since we left and started naming the days after we arrived.
The name of the first day was ‘Know Where’.
We’ve arrived — welcome home.
