One Small Flame

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