The Splendor of a Mortal Dream

The majesty of life is a grand, beautiful madness, a brief passage through eternity in which we are granted the impossible privilege of looking upon the stars and wondering why we were ever given the gift of existence. I have often thought the greatest sorrow of being alive is knowing how deeply one can love a world that must someday be surrendered. We enter this life with hearts capable of extraordinary tenderness, only to discover that every beautiful thing is touched by time. Still, we love with a desperation that defies mortality, knowing full well that the hands reaching for another will one day fall still, and the voices we would give anything to hear again will survive only in memory.

There is a loneliness belonging to those who spend too much of their lives contemplating eternity. It can follow a person into a crowded room, settle among known faces, and remain long after every conversation has ended. I knew something of that loneliness as a young man. I spent years trying to understand the person I was, wondering whether the world would ever make room for all of me. There were things I kept hidden, words I swallowed, feelings I carried alone because I feared what might happen if someone saw past the person I had learned to present. Life continued around me. People laughed, lovers embraced, and the world carried on, while I wrestled with questions, I had no courage to speak aloud. What are we doing here? Why must something so beautiful be granted so little time? And why should the simple act of loving another person ever become a source of sorrow?

I find a grim and solemn rite within the kingdom of the night, when midnight tolls its solemn knell like some forgotten, sunken bell. In those hours, the distractions of the world fall away, leaving a solitary soul alone with thoughts kept hidden for years. The stars look down upon us with an indifference almost unbearable. They have witnessed kingdoms rise, empires fall, countless births and countless deaths. Generations have lived beneath that same heaven, each believing their joys and sorrows to be of immeasurable consequence, each eventually surrendering their place to those who follow. I look upon those stars and wonder how many hearts have broken beneath them, how many lovers have wept for one another, how many lonely souls have searched the darkness for an answer that never came.

This is the great cruelty of existence, perhaps its greatest wonder. We are given the capacity to imagine eternity while being denied even a promise of tomorrow. Our minds wander through magnificent realms of possibility, while our hearts remain bound to the people we cannot bear to lose. I have known what it means to feel too much, to question my place in the world, to wonder whether the person I saw reflected in my own thoughts could ever be accepted by those around me. The years have taught me that much of what once seemed insurmountable eventually becomes part of the story we tell about ourselves. The wounds remain in memory, though their meaning changes. The young man I once was could hardly have imagined the life waiting for him, the love he would find, or the freedom that would come with finally allowing himself to be known.

What is a lifetime, after all, but a trembling flame against vast darkness? We enter the world knowing nothing of its mysteries, spending our years gathering fragments of understanding, loving people whose departures will break us, making memories that time will eventually claim. There are moments when I wish I could gather every person I have ever loved into my arms and tell them how precious their existence has been to me. I would tell them that the smallest kindness left its mark, that their laughter became part of my own, that some of the most beautiful moments of my life were those I never knew I would miss. I would tell the younger version of myself that life holds more tenderness than fear ever allowed him to imagine, and that the love he once believed might condemn him could become one of the greatest gifts he would ever receive.

One day, the final summons shall come. All the questions that haunted us will fall into the great mystery from which existence first emerged. The hands we held, the tears we shed, the dreams we cherished, the words we never found the courage to speak will belong to a world continuing its journey without us. I cannot say what waits beyond that final darkness. I have no certainty to offer, no grand revelation to place against the mystery of death. I can only hope that in the vastness of creation, all the love we gave and all the love we received remain part of something greater than our brief mortal lives.

If the stars continue burning long after my eyes have closed, I hope they will bear witness to one small truth. I was here. I loved this world, even when it broke my heart. I knew loneliness, feared rejection, and spent years discovering that the person I had struggled so hard to accept was worthy of love all along. I wept for the world's beauty, grieved for its sorrows, and stood beneath the endless heavens in wonder at the privilege of having lived at all. Perhaps that is all any of us can leave behind, a little evidence of having loved, a little kindness given to another soul, a life that mattered to someone. If eternity should remember nothing else of me, let it be known that for one brief, precious moment, I was among the living. I loved with all that I had.

Author’s Note

Some of the lines in this prose have been with me for nearly four decades. The passage below originally appeared in a poem I wrote when I was 21 years old, during a period of my life when I was struggling to understand myself and coming to terms with being gay.

I find a grim and solemn rite
within the kingdom of the night,
when midnight tolls its solemn knell
like some forgotten, sunken bell.

I was a much younger man when those words first came to me. I knew loneliness, feared rejection, and often wondered whether the world would ever accept the person I was. Much of what I felt remained unspoken, finding its way onto the page instead. Those four lines belonged to that time in my life, and their meaning has remained close to my heart.

When I began writing The Splendor of a Mortal Dream for the Steal From Yourself Challenge, I knew I wanted to bring those words back. Their meaning had grown from the circumstances in which I first wrote them. What once reflected the loneliness of a young man struggling with his identity now found a place in a much larger reflection on life, love, mortality, and the passage of time.

In returning to those words, I found myself bringing a piece of my younger self into the present. The years between the two works have given me a different understanding of love, acceptance, and the preciousness of being alive. I cannot return to the young man who wrote that original poem, though I can give his words another life.

Reading that old poem again brings back a young man I remember well. He had so many fears about the life ahead of him, and he could hardly imagine the years that would follow. I wish I could sit with him for a while and tell him how much life was waiting for him, how much love he would find, and how differently he would one day see himself.

This is the original poem that I wrote many years ago when I was 25 years old.

A Soul in Exile

From childhood’s dawn a shadow grew
a terror that no mortal knew.
I watched the youth, their careless grace,
and sought my reflection in their face
to crave the touch of fellow man
beneath a heavy, silent ban
and dread the burning eyes of state,
lest they should see and seal my fate.

I learned to cast my glances low
where rivers of their passions flow,
and masked my grief with hollow glee
when cruelty mocked what lived in me.
Each biting phrase, a poisoned dart,
found lodging in my bleeding heart,
while at the hearth, in muted dread,
I hid the truths I left unsaid.

I find a grim and solemn rite
within the kingdom of the night,
when midnight tolls its solemn knell
like some forgotten, sunken bell.

In bitter hours, I begged the skies
to wipe the sorrow from my eyes,
to strip the burden from my soul
and make my fractured spirit whole.
I feared my father’s judgment cold,
the rigid life I must behold,
and wept to think that God above
had cursed the nature of my love.

The creeping years like shadows passed,
the secret grew too vast to last.
I longed to break the heavy chain,
to flee the darkness and the pain,
to have them look on me and scan
a son, a brother, and a man,
not some foul shape of hidden sin
immured in shame that burned within.

But when the truth finally left my tongue,
no sudden bell of freedom rung,
no sudden light, no swift release,
only the ghost of shattered peace.
The heavy truth was strictly cast,
the present could not heal the past.
I stood bewildered in the light,
a stranger stepped from out the night.

I see him still, that lonely ghost
upon a bleak and barren coast,
afraid of love, afraid of dawn,
with all his youthful armor gone.
Oh, had he known the sin was theirs
who trapped his soul in hateful prayers,
the exile that he bore in vain
was but the world’s unholy stain.