Is there any greater liberty than knowing the choice you want to make, and then making it?

Perhaps in close contention is the stumbling upon a paralysing fear, only to quieten it all with a conclusive and calm resolve.

And I sit here not in the absence of action, but seek to craft and whittle and taper the wooden block that keeps pen from paper, and I from satisfaction.

Inspire and goad me from resignation, unshackle the apathy that binds animation, and I dare you to find me for a moment retired ’til this writing is worthy of being desired; a reason discovered, and a purpose acquired.

The meaning of life is to experience living, so surrender your heart to the art of its giving.

We are Princes. The lot of us. And we have forgotten the point of being. Everything is in the name of stimulation, occupation, amusement, and purpose; for in the grand scheme of things, we have none.

What purpose have we now that we’ve pooled our resources? Working 40 hours a week so we can enjoy 50-odd of freedom. Freedom. From what?! From the struggle of living? Perhaps. But not from our 8-hour shifts; only existing as part of the freedom we claim that it’s robbing.

How twisted a purpose, and altogether meaningless. Even science, as bold as it comes, is an extraordinarily complex, but all the while utterly insignificant pursuit of denial.

We are meant to survive. No more. No less. And, to be fair, we’re pretty damn good at it. But I just cannot help but wonder how much of my everyday life, it’s triumphs and woes, how much of it is the utter fabrication of a deeper despairing?

Like battleships cruising into the middle of an easy, peaceful, sunny bay, we blast gulls from the water. Just because.

Because we’re Princes. The lot of us. Royalty of survival. And with little in the way of adversaries, is it any wonder we go mad with boredom?

I cannot bear the silence. Forever awaiting the unperturbed to rustle or bump me from my slumber, in the dead of night or lonely day.

Settle me in city streets where sirens sound their sordid tones to rob you of your R.E.M. and riddle you with dreams,

but I, with eyes closed all the while, will smile and sleep among the keeps that house the rare-outnumbered.

We morph and we morph until we find the form that pleases most and paints a fair reflection.

What I seek in love ain’t love alone; that is, it’s not enough to love, or to be loved in return, it is the striving to find a version of me that I’m willing to keep around.

For every person I meet, for every situation I’m in, there seems to be another kind of “I”, filling the mould and adapting to this changeable environment.

Nor is it a case of trying to work out WHO I am, because there just is NO ONE WAY in which I exist. A multitude of personas, ideologies, desires and aspirations, all of them webbing a complex weave of existence, amounting to the sum of all my parts and becoming “I”.

Instead, it’s about experiencing most every side of this multichotomical state of being, and deciding which, if any, of these many masks is the most becoming.

I am who I am in the presence of you, whoever YOU are or MAY BE when, in the presence of me, you’ve morphed and warped your skin to suit the colour of this encounter.

So you see, I don’t mourn because love is hard to find, or muster from the twisted roots of crass desire, but the BLATANT, STARK and NAKED fact that cries a tortured plea is that you were the only one that made a better me.

I was lying on a beach, looking out at a boat, stationary at the tip of an arm of land, jutting out from the mouth of this cove. I stared at it for a while, willing it to move, to sail away so that I may see it in motion, taking to the waves, as was its design to do.

But it remained, unaffected by my wishes. And though I have heard we should not ask of the divine to prove itself, like some genie to appear upon rubbing a lamp, it seemed too opportune a moment – for He perhaps even more than I – to prove this atheist misguided.

I did not clasp my hands in prayer, nor look to the sky for answers, I simply asked, and awaited to see if I would receive. “I’ll believe…if you move that boat.” The underlying question being “Will you give me faith?”, whereby I’d take it as confirmation, if the boat did indeed move, or were it to stay put, I’d find myself godless.

The boat moved. It didn’t sail majestically, or race from its dock, but for the first time in all my moments of watching, it rocked and swayed…presumably upon some passing wave. I smiled. “Coincidence.” I murmured. But I cannot claim that I thought no more of it, and this bit of writing is testament to said denial.

Perhaps it was coincidence. And I remember asking of God to move it again, just so that I may be sure. It did not move a second time. But perhaps I’d had my quota? I’d asked, received, but then questioned, and sought out affirmation of my confirmation.

If I were He, I’d not have moved the boat again either. Where would it end? When would this demanding reassurance find itself content? When it moved again? When it sailed West? When it rose from the very water it rocked upon?

To grant every trial and proving question would be to grant an infinite medium, becoming of the man a magician of sorts, whereby he would then no doubt conclude he was, in himself, a God.

Why did I deny the first proof, and cast it off as coincidence? Because it was not complex enough a request? Should I have asked for something more elaborate, before wasting it on trivials? I believe at the time I was aiming small, giving my God-in-question every opportunity to present himself discreetly.

…

But just now, it occurred to me how infinitely complex a coincidence that I came to be lying on that beach at all, looking out at a boat, on water, next to land, both earth and sea teeming with life, for me to cut right through this wonderful amalgamation of coincidences, and ask the boat to move.

It did move.

And the mind boggles.