Climbing the Tower of Hope

One foot in front of the other, one step at a time because I'm too weak to do it any other way, I make my way around and around, higher and higher every time. Every quarter-turn takes me past another window, and I look out for a little while, or for hours, sometimes even for days, depending on what it is I see. I only see the things I want to see, the wind blows cold in my eyes and makes me squint, makes my eyes water so that I don't see anything else. Why would I want to see anything else?

This window looks out across the valley and over the mountains to a city whose name I never knew, likely never will know. It's just a little bit sad, knowing that, but I've seen so many cities that I would be hard pressed to point them all out on a map, even if I had a perfect memory, which I do not. Maybe, though, I can remember this one, remember the skyline so that even when it's gone, by war or disaster or just through slow human change, I will remember the skyline that those people created to live their lives in.

By remembering this skyline that no one person created, it is like I am remembering all of the people who worked on it, or lived in it. After all, they all had a hand in shaping it, and it is like a piece of art that grew out of their just going about living their lives. I can give them a sort of immortality, by remembering their skyline after they are all long gone.

Who am I to say who does or does not deserve immortality? Well, I am the one who has it to give, so who better to decide than me? There are surely those who are better qualified than I to separate the good from the bad, the sheep from the goats, one springs to mind immediately, but He is very far away. So I am left to my own devices, and when I see this city I know that it is filled with good people and bad people and people who swing both ways, and people who are minding their own business, and people who are not, and they are all part of this amazing tapestry that I am trying very hard to remember forever. If anyone at all deserves immortality, it is them.

After a time I have done all I can to commit the skyline to memory, and I will carry it with me up the stairs. At the next window I will see something else, and it will be even more hopeful than the last thing I saw. This tower reaches to heaven, and I'm on my way to the top.

Many people have been this way before, I sometimes stumble across the remains of those who died here. They died happy, and full of hope, and when I look out the window they were looking out of, I sense that they had great things in mind. Often I am tempted to stop at those windows and rest with them, but I have greater things in mind.

My goals are greater even than the ideals that these people gave their lives for, who died in this tower. They looked out of their windows and saw things that filled them with hope, and they watched and planned out every detail of what they could do to make their slice of the world perfect. They waited for the one little thing they needed to make everything right, and their bodies still wait, though I am no longer sure for what. So I press on, because I have better things in store.

~END~

previous