~ Gurrewa ~

by

Kev Richardson

A Crossroads

Was life a shit, the unwanted waste of human endeavour? Was the world the poop-pail in which mankind wallowed in the swill that life had become?

He was lost in a wilderness between boyhood and manhood, innocence and evil, understanding and uncaring, between two worlds, that of his nurture and that of his gaoler. And he feared the void.

Never had he needed to question values or doubt standards. He and his world had ever been one, two parts of a whole, in unison. Never did he consider he and his environment separate, never was there conflict between what it expected of him and he of it. Every standard he held to, of life, mankind, love, honour, all were creations of the world he’d known. The difference between right and wrong had ever been simple to distinguish, acceptance ever been instinctive. Never did he question that social interaction ruled the world.

Yet now he found a crossroads.

The people of the world he was now part of insisted his values were false, his standards based on false premise. Could he have been naive in believing that in all men there was need each for the other if they were to live in harmony? He’d ever followed a course true to such a philosophy, yet if they were right, that the environment his early world created was wrong, were then the values nurtured by it wrong? Or had he simply failed to fairly assess them?

A frightening doubt.

Seven years they gave him to accept their right, deny his wrong.

And they would chain him, flog him, degrade and vilify him until he did.

What superior sense of value was this?

He could not understand their world, yet captive in its environment, was surely then, opportunity to gauge their values, weigh them against his.

He would test it fair, listen with open mind, observe with open eyes.

Seven years would test it, the opportunity theirs, the challenge his.