If one accepts the biblical account—
(and I do)
man began in an idyllic state,
a literal paradise
where everything
was within reach.
Only one thing was withheld:
the fruit that would awaken
the knowledge of good and evil.
And man—being man—
desired the one thing denied.
It is in us
to reach beyond
what is given,
to strain toward
what is withheld.
This is not entirely a flaw.
We trade
the ease of the idyllic
for the weight
of the meaningful.
Perhaps that trade
is the flame
that keeps us human.
This is the paradox of choice—
we must leave comfort
to pursue what glitters beyond it.
But what is the limit
of our willingness to trade?
What will we pay
to slip the surly bonds of mediocrity?
To reach higher,
go deeper,
move faster,
be more?
What price do we assign
to transcendence?
Paradise, without risk, becomes a cage.
And we alone, of all creation,
will abandon comfort for meaning—
even when meaning wounds us.
There must be more.
So we leave the known,
face the undiscovered,
and return changed.
But when the quest hollows the soul,
when hunger becomes drowning,
when speed becomes escape,
when ‘More’ becomes a substitute for meaning—
what then,
are we unwilling to lose?
And yet—
even the wanderer
must keep one thing unbroken,
one ember untouched by ambition,
one truth that cannot be traded
for height or depth or speed.
For what is transcendence
if nothing of us remains
to be transformed?
What good is the horizon
if we lose the eyes that long for it?
What use is the beyond
if the self that arrives there
is only a shadow
of the one who began the journey?
It is better to arrive
carrying one small original flame
than to stand in ashes
having forgotten
what it was to burn
© Ron Simpson Jr.
March 20, 2026
