This is a follow-up to yesterday's post.
I feel like I was run over by a train. A train of re-told history and my own imagination that is way too powerful. I only slept for about 4 hours and that is next to nothing for me. I finished "Veritas" last night, or rather, early in the morning. The book I was ranting about yesterday, in my last post. It wrecked my heart. I feel all empty inside and when I finished the book all I wanted to do was seek shelter in a church. Of course you don't find an open church in Rgbg at 1.30 a.m. in the morning. This book gained some mysterious power towards the end. Devastation, but a very wondrous one. It said that nowadays, the fight is not an open battle between people with good goals and people with bad goals like it was once. A fight of people respecting others as people.
Nowadays it's a secret fight of a few good people against an omnipotent, omnipresent, dark system of evil that never shows its true face. It has no face. And of course I knew that before, everybody with the power of reflecting knows. But when I read about it, it was like realizing it all over again and it was depressing. I'm still depressed. And that's why I wanted to pray so badly and I couldn't find any sleep because my thoughts were swirling around the subject, trying to find a solution or at least an explanation (I call that process praying). I still want to go to a church but I'm sitting here in this student council room, trying to sort out my thoughts because I should be working.
One day I will die and then I will, hopefully, get an explanation of WHY the world is like this, why is the greatest power an awful, deadly power that is invisible? But what if after death there is nothing? I don't want to die yet because I still need time to prove that I was born to be one of the good people trying to fight against the invisible foe (and that is why I joined the church because I know the church is full of evil too but there are also quite a lot of good people coming together here, and I'm looking for them). I'm very excited to see what there might be awaiting us after dying. But the point is, what to do before that?
What to do in the little time we have before death? Even if we kill someone that we think is bad, nothing changes. All we did was kill a fellow human but we didn't make the world any better. We didn't erase badness, we just erased a human life and through the bloodshed we made the world an even sadder place. We can't really change the world. We can fight, but if we do, the probability that we will get wounded in some way is very high. The other option is that we do nothing and just live in this world. Just play along, even if our sense of justice tells us that we should be screaming and fighting. But no, we adjust and we're telling ourselves: In a few decades we will die and until then we'll just play along, and by that we are supporting the system that, in exchange, allows us to live. We are faceless cogwheels. Somehow we get this life over with. Be as happy as we can be with as little effort as possible. Isn't that how we all are living? I'm not trying to offend anyone with this, because I'm living the same life. If there was an easy way to change it, I would do it. Everyone would. But there is no easy way. And I'm scared of the enormous sacrifices.
Oh, yeah, the book. What did I want to say about the book? Really, the book isn't the point anymore, my thoughts have evolved from there. But I don't want to leave you in the dark about the fate of Simonis, my beloved Greek character I told you about. His fate and acts actually cracked my heart open and made the thought of our pointless lifes seep into me so deeply.
It turned out that Simonis was a secret agent of the Holy Roman Empire, a noble fighter for the (true!) Christian cause, against the hidden force of evil. A fight that is always lost. He was a "hero", you might say, although I dislike the word very much. When he died on page 798 I was incredibly sad, although I had seen it coming all the time. It was like someone had kicked me in the chest and my breath and my eyes started to water, but I thought to myself: "No need to cry, it's just a book and although people like him have definitley existed, this happened 300 years ago." But, you see, people like him still exist nowadays and often they die for their cause, fighting for clueless, unsuspecting fools like me, and that is so extremely sad. The thought of these people whom we are losing (for it is our loss, not theirs) made me put the book down and walk around in the room. Not for long, though. I wanted to finish the book which made me so sad. I kept reading. Until on page 852, like a dream, Simonis was walking in. He was never dead. I had been fooled. Everyone had been fooled. I told you he's a genius. I had been toyed with. He had come a long way from "the idiot" to the "most faithful and heroic secret agent of the Holy Roman Empire". I should have known he (and only he!) was capable of doing what he did. And now I cried. Sorry, but that was too much. You can't shake my heart like this! I don't remember the last time I cried, let alone over a book.
If I ever meet the authors of this book (and they live in Vienna, so it's not totally impossible), I will wail to them about this.
I have to go back to my diploma thesis now. If I can ever concentrate again.
[Edit: So I was sushi eating with Kingpin and Ellen tonight, and it was great, I talked about Veritas to them and since the three of us are theologicans, it turned into quite a good discussion. It calmed me down but I'm still upset. I hope I can sleep tonight. Later, I called my mother and told her about Veritas too, but I don't think she understood a single thing. In any case, I noticed that Veritas is full of little riddles. And now I'm busy googling for the solutions. It's soothing.]