Metamorphosis 48/58: Book I ‘The Story of Grandfather Moses’ — Chapter V

or We Are The Weak Nuclear Force: Quantum Parables From Our Mitochondrial Ancestors

And then my brother asks me

“Why is it you act this way?”

And I say to Goliath “This is the only way I know”

“All there is in the world is truth”

“Truth and goodness”

“And I am not the judge”

“I let my heart decide”

And then my brother asks me

“Why do you act this way?”

And I say to him that it is because this is the only way I know

“All there is in the world is truth”

“Truth and goodness”

“I speak as my heart tells me to”

And he looks at me in frustration

“Why can’t you just be normal?”

I tell him

“Goliath,”

“Why do you act this way?”

And he says because this is the way that a human being is supposed to be

And I ask him how does he know this?

And he says because it is obvious / It is how all the world acts

“Strength in the hunt”

“The raising of children”

“The leading of our people”

He is doing that which he is supposed to do

And then I ask him but what does your heart tell you?

And he looks at me irritated

“What does my heart have to do with this”

“What does that even mean?”

What I would love him to say is that he wants to impress me and impress all the world

And that he does this because he is afraid

Afraid of what if the world doesn’t love him

That he does not know himself

He is unaware if he is good or bad or the devil

But he does not give me the pleasure to say this

Instead, he looks at my with irritation

“You know it’s weird how you are acting? / You should not act this way?”

His words hurt me

“And then how should I act?”

“You should fill your role”

“But what is my role?”

“You can be whoever you want!”

“But then I choose to be as I am / And if I am right, then is that not okay? / And if I am wrong and I hurt no one, then am I not free to be myself? / I do not tell you to be anything else other than yourself”

“Don’t you? / Don’t your actions tell me that I am inferior? / Aren’t you always quietly judging me?”

“No, that is not the case / But I do think you judge me”

“Yes”

“But that does not bother me”

“Shouldn’t it?”

“For some it would / For you, I think it would”

“And why do you think you are so great?”

“I do not think I am great, I am just unsure if I am right or wrong / I could be wrong / I could be wrong / I don’t want to hurt anyone if it turns out I am wrong”

“But what if you have to make a choice?”

“A choice on what?”

“Isn’t life about choices about the unknown? / You could hurt someone without intention”

“Then I will do the best I can”

“And what is the best you can”

“Well, I will try my hardest to do the right choice / I will tear apart my mind, I will not be passive, I will dream and experiment, I will try to imagine all the quantum possibilities in my head, giving each and every one weight / Then close off all those options that are too likely to lead to the opposite of truth and goodness”

“And what if you make a choice then lightning strikes all the tribe dead? Because of your choice”

“Then that would be out of my control / But if it was to happen once, I would work to not let it happen again”

“How would you do that?”

“I would go to places where the trees are not scarred by lightning”

“But what if you don’t have fire and then you need fire?”

“We have fire”

“And if we did not? / How would you make the choice between finding fire from the falling lightning or avoiding death from falling lightning?”

“I would do the best that I can / There are endless paths open to us / Many are dead ends / Perhaps all are dead ends / But I will seek to kill the dead ends before they kill me / I will understand my mind and dream the universe around me / I will not make in the real world the same mistakes I make in my dreams / And when the universe decides to fight me / Then I will fight back”

“Whatever the costs?”

“Is this fight not the only thing that I have?”

“But how do you know what to do?”

“I will just try my hardest“

“And what if your hardest is not enough?”

“Then I will fail and hope that others better than me carry forward”

“Why do you talk like this?”

“Because it’s the only way that I know how”

“How can we come from the same childhood but be so different?”

“There is night and there is day but they are both parts of our life”

“What does that mean?”

“That we are different but the same”

“I don’t know why you can’t just be a better hunter, a better tribe member”

“Because we are going to all die very soon if we do not find a way to live better”

“That is not true”

“That is true / We almost just died of starvation, then we almost just died of cold / We see less life, less of our people / We are dying”

“I am alive”

“And so am I”

“We are not going to die”

“Some day we will die”

“The tribe will grow!”

“Is the tribe growing?”

“You can’t be so negative about everything!”

“We are talking about the death of our people”

“I believe we will stay alive!”

“I believe we have it in our destiny the potential to stay alive”

“What is the difference?”

“It is dependant on the choices we make”

“I think you are weighing down the tribe by your inability to focus”

“I do not question that is a potential truth / But I am trying as hard as I can / Everything is a potential truth until all the others are eliminated / There is only one truth and an infinite number of charades / I am seeking to follow the path of truth”

“Well just work a bit harder”

“Yes, brother, I will”