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Book of Nero
This is my journal. I am Nero! c:
Child Soldiers
When you were small, you were under the impression of one of an infinity of circumstances, which was the beginning of the trail to where you stand now, still moving. In what way are you moving? Unless you're a hero of unspeakable proportion, it probably has very much to do with those circumstances from when you were small.
Were you born in a sunlit place where the older people looked at you and smiled, and held your hand, and connected with you? Maybe you were born to a life with your skin in the rain, hunger, cold, no hands to take yours, no guidance, no inheritance. From the first smiles you may have received when you were a child, acting as you did, guided by your childlike mind, to the first sneers of contempt, yells at innocent inquiries, or lethargic rejection. These things influenced your childlike mind. If all you saw was the sun of your birthplace, and all you knew was playing and laughing, and exploring, then you were inevitably exposed to evil, and that evil found its way into your mind. It became part of your mind, and your mind dealt with it in one of many ways. As a child, you weren't certain enough to take a position of authority, and wipe the evil from your mind. So you thought of it, and you recognized its nature. Wherever you were born, you saw evil somewhere. Maybe you were unlucky enough to be born into pain, and never had any sunlight and warmth. But wherever you came from, you found evil somewhere along the trail you traveled. How you dealt with it determines who you have been since.
There are those who accept the evil, and become its servant, or its consort. Or its begrudging drone, who may be more honorable than the first, but belong to it nonetheless. Then there are those who rejected the evil, and became depressed, eventually losing the struggle. There are those who rejected the evil, but then saw no place for themselves outside of it, and turned over. And the list goes on and on, until you reach a tiny, knife-edge majority of heroes who may well have struggled, but who battled through the strain, the weight, the exhaustion, the gray, the self-pity, and became that sort of person who belongs everywhere he walks. Who feels no pain which can reach his core, who cannot be dismantled and destroyed, and who knows this, and so he walks with his head held high.
There is no utopia for children to be born into. All children of the past, and of today, and of the future as far as it can be looked into, have and will find evil, and will have to face it and respond to it. And this leads to a conflict- and what that conflict is, and what is at stake, creates the nature of the conflict itself. The conflict is a war- a war bigger than anything that exists or ever could exist. It is the single most important battle of your life. It *is* your life. When you were little, what did you dream of? What was your bright view of the world, and the future? And as a child, what did you daydream about, possibly until your daydreams were crushed by nastiness which surrounded you? If you made it this far, and you're even a bit older, maybe embittered to some extent, you may have moments through the unrelenting pain, where you find rest and thing of the future, or you go to a place in your mind where everything is okay, and you feel the warmth of some source of dreams or happiness. Maybe you've reached a point where you understand that *that* ultimate form of happiness you dreamed of can never be. But whether it can never be is determined by how you responded in your war. And if your truest, most personal source of happiness, if your own dream is impossible because of the pain you've met with all around you, then you've begun to lose the war. And how you take it from there will determine whether or not the war can *ever* be won for you. Human beings are capable of happiness. You may have seen happy people. Pity for you if you deny this claim. Hopefully, you've felt that sort of happiness that comes from one who values life and living. That great energy that takes you to a dream, or makes you pursue that in life which you value. That thing which has always given you the strength to get out of bed, from day one- even if it was harder and harder to get out of bed every day, you still did it, and you still do. That happiness and that vision may have been yelled at, laughed at, stomped, scorned, ridiculed, and so it may become clouded, it may drift further from you in the chaos, but it still exists. So, whether you do, or *can* recognize that, and reclaim that vision and that happiness, and whether you grab hold of it and never let go, that will determine the entirety of your life, and of yourself, and of your entire universe, as long as you exist. The struggle to hold on through such a storm of infinite complications is a struggle that tests the greatest strength within the strongest man. It's a struggle that would demand the attention of the greatest hero. Maybe you're a hero. Maybe you're one of the ones who will get beaten down.
If you cry, don't cry aloud in hopes of being seen and receiving pity. Maybe it will make the war easier? No one can fight the war within your own mind for you. If you find someone you care about, don't try to latch yourself onto them, hoping they can carry you through your war. Maybe you will try to manipulate those others into easing your own tumultuous conscience? Maybe *you* will become just another trial that they will be forced to face. Maybe you will throw yourself on their shoulders, when the weight is already making their entire body tremble. Don't let yourself be. Or else you'll have nothing, when the heroes find a way to march on. You'll be left to the worms, who even *you* will see, have nothing to offer you.
Don't hate the ones who fail. They may still have a chance. But don't indulge their public sobbing. You might be the host they need, to become parasites. Don't let them latch onto you. You can't fight their war for them. But if you are strong enough, through your battle, you might look around and fixate your eyes on another, who is also fighting and refusing to be extinguished. And maybe you can take each other's hands and fight together, if only you two refuse to become parasites. If only you two can keep strong. And maybe you'll reemerge, still holding hands.
Now, and as far back as can be seen, children are being born into this battle. Their pure minds are subject to those evils, which may exist as their parents. In the place of guardians, they may receive devils. Evil will try to infiltrate them in countless ways. They will either be destroyed, or the children will be forced to fight through a struggled that would demand the full capacity of any man. With big eyes and a gentle complexion, the children are thrust into a war for men. Maybe you've seen the ones who lost their big eyes and smiles for sneers. Or maybe you've seen one of the heroes who grew up early, and whose smile, and innocence could never be torn away, or at least was reclaimed.
Whether you win or lose depends on you alone. Every pain you've ever known, every happiness or vision you've ever felt, it's all included. The happiness, the vision, that's what's at stake. Compromise, and you compromise this. Never before have I uttered the words "Take care" so sincerely.





 
 
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