Letter to the Future. VI - Your Closest Treasures

Wednesday 4 April 2010 Your Closest Treasures To Future, Stop right here. Close your eyes. What is around you? Why is it around you and how does the why matter? Today, future, I offer no anecdotes about political turbulence or national happenings. Those matters, in these moments, are petty things. This will likely be a short note, and as you read it I'd like to offer you a rare suggestion.
Track down and play track 1 of the album Sigh No More by a band from my world, Mumford & Sons. Just turn it on. There are too many details adorning the reasons I'm writing this particular note, and I won't idle by them. What is important is this: what your life likely needs at any given moment are people willing to bear their souls in front of you. My world breaks down people in a way that detaches body from soul from spirit from life. Scavenge sullen faces which no longer speak willingly about the stirrings they've locked inside and be sure they know that you remember the worth of neglected treasures. If you want friends, smile and mind your manners and you'll feel less alone. But if you want relationship, then marvel with those friends over the way your communion evades description. Tell them about your family and listen to them about yours. When you figure out that your parents are actually people, with a past and with serious fears and sexuality, tell them that too. Because its really incredible. And when you find words for the landscapes or lovers or literature that really knock you off center, be sure to tell them that too. Spend plenty of time with the stars as your only light, this is important. Why is the now important, Future? Because the now is yours. Better yet, because the now is all of yours, to have together. I had you close your eyes so that you might ask someone to read this to you. If you didn't, consider starting over. And now, you and that someone (with any luck) are becoming aware of the multitude degrees by which we are capable of communion, seeing as you have your eyes closed and are listening to the voice of a trusted accomplice as it makes audible this nearly lost letter penned so many years ago in a place, at a time, and in a state of mind you can never visit or fully comprehend, by the very nature of our being different entities. Try as we might to splice our souls, they're stubborn, yet try we must; it seems an insistance from elsewhere. And so, Future, do not fear or resent what wells inside you, even if its just an intuition, telling you this time is important. Right you are. Be it a kitchen counter, a carpet floor in the pitch black, a lakeside or a mountain top, take your loved ones wherever you must in order to articulate why this time is important, why their presence fosters your articulation as much as the tides or soft spoken darkness. You see, Future, you can be each other's fortune, and in knowing that you shed pounds of the stupidity anchoring my world to its ugliest, most distracting concerns. Dare to bear your souls, Future, and free one another from bondage in the face of which neither guns nor money offer any hope. Be well, live free. Erik in the past.

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