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Life is an
island in an ocean of solitude and seclusion.
Life is
an island, rocks are its desires, trees its dreams, and
flowers its loneliness, and it is in the middle of an
ocean of solitude and seclusion.
Your
life, my friend, is an island separated from all other
islands and continents. Regardless of how many boats
you send to other shores or how many ships arrive upon
your shores, you yourself are an island separated by its
own pains, secluded in its happiness and far away in its
compassion and hidden in its secrets and mysteries.
I saw
you, my friend, sitting upon a mound of gold, happy in
your wealth and great in your riches and believing that a
handful of gold is the secret chain that links the
thoughts of the people with your own thoughts and links
their feelings with your own.
I saw you
as a great conqueror leading a conquering army toward the
fortress, then destroying and capturing it.
On second
glance I found beyond the wall of your treasures a heart
trembling in its solitude and seclusion like the trembling
of a thirsty man within a cage of gold and jewels, but
without water.
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I saw
you, my friend, sitting on a throne of glory, surrounded
by people extolling your charity, enumerating your gifts,
gazing upon you as if they were in the presence of a
prophet lifting their souls up into the planets and
stars. I saw you looking at them, contentment and
strength upon your face, as if you were to them as the
soul is to the body.
On the
second look I saw your secluded self standing beside your
throne, suffering in its seclusion and quaking in its
loneliness.
I saw that self stretching its hands as
if begging from unseen ghosts. I saw it looking
above the shoulders of the people to a far horizon, empty
of everything except its solitude and seclusion.
I saw
you, my friend, passionately in love with a beautiful
woman, filling her palms with your kisses as she
looked at you with sympathy and affection in her eyes and
the sweetness of motherhood on her lips; I said, secretly,
that love has erased his solitude and removed his
seclusion and he is now within the eternal soul which
draws toward itself, with love, those who were separated
by solitude and seclusion.
On the
second look I saw behind your soul another lonely soul,
like a fog, trying in vain to become a drop of tears in
the palm of that woman.
Your
life, my friend, is a residence far away from other homes
named after you. If this residence is dark, you
cannot light it with your neighbor's lamp; if it is empty
you cannot fill it with the riches of your neighbor; were
it in the middle of the desert, you could not move it to a
garden planted by someone else.
Your
inner soul, my friend, is surrounded with solitude and
seclusion. Were it not for this solitude and this
seclusion you would not be you and I would not be I.
If it were not for that solitude and seclusion, I would,
if I heard your voice, think myself to be speaking; yet,
if I saw your face, I would imagine that I were looking
into a mirror.
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