Where the Sidwalk Ends

Are you daring enough to venture?

Men are haunted by the vastness of eternity, and so we ask ourselves, will our actions echo across the centuries? Will strangers hear our names long after we’re gone and wonder who we were, how bravely we fought, how fiercely we loved?

The above, taken from the movie Troy, encapsulates a struggle that man has dealt with for more than a thousand years. Some walk this life simply, they go through the motions every day and never daring to dream or believe anything beyond their quiet existence. Others strive for better. They are those who focus their thoughts on what is to come, those who live constantly reminded that their time is limited and it causes them to push even harder to break the boundaries of what has been done before. They live with the dream that in a thousand years, when their bones are dust, their names will have lived on.

Will their actions echo across the centuries?

 

What is the force that pushes these people to their limits? What is it that constantly hovers at the edge of their minds, reminding them of their mortality? Time, in many ways, could be described as one of the most admirable of tricksters. He plays with the mind as though it were merely a child’s toy yet at the same time he fools the heart into false comfort and safety. And when we try to capture him, place him in a cage to perhaps attempt to hold a moment still, he slips away as comfortably as fish in water. Yes, Time certainly has a way of seducing minds and breaking hearts and never allowing us to preserve moments the way we want them. Perhaps he delights in our pain, perhaps it is the agent which pushes Time to do as he does or perhaps he merely finds our lives strangely empty and tiresome and wishes to alter them in some way hoping for something more interesting. Whatever the reason, Time is never on our side. He fights only for himself and his motives are his own. He cannot be persuaded, bought or changed and as much as many people hate to admit it, Time rules our lives.

 

We live in a world where people are constantly playing for time, searching for ways to prolong life and always, in the distance, looms the darkness of the inevitable end. This is where the world is split into three. Some people would look at that darkness in fear, cowering and feeling the few feeble dreams they had melt away as they realise how little time they actually have. They walk quietly along the road of life, always staying on the sidewalk, avoiding anything that could bring that heavy cloud any closer than it already is.

 

Then there are the people who acknowledge the existence of the darkness, their hearts jump slightly at the thought of it, but they manage to hold onto their dreams and sometimes, just sometimes, they manage to make them come true. They walk along the sidewalk, but feeling a little bit more daring than the former, step into the road when necessary.

 

Lastly, the daring. They have long since seen and realised the implication of the looming darkness. They do not cower in fear or merely acknowledge its existence, they stand on the edge of it. By allowing the darkness to cover them, by embracing the thought of falling over the edge, into the unknown, they alone can truly understand the importance of life. They alone understand and accept that life cannot be appreciated without appreciating its partner, the one with which it walks hand in hand. Death. And while they feel the wind whipping around them and the adrenaline pumping through their veins at the thought of falling forward, they dream.

They stare downward into the dark chasm that is eternity and hear the faint echoes it throws at them. The echoes of those before them who have embraced life and death as they do now and have extended the boundaries.

On the road of life, the daring walk where the sidewalk has ended, they walk where no-one else will and throw themselves at every opportunity, knowing that this is the only chance they have.

 

For you see, it is only when you push beyond everything you know that you will truly discover the person you are and the person you can be. All those dreams you have, everything you could ever wish for is attainable, if only you were daring enough to venture where the sidewalk ends.

Will your actions echo across the centuries?

 

Henry van Dyke once described time as the following: too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice.

But, Time is never too much or too little of anything for those who embrace its true meaning. That it will never come again. This is what makes life what it is. Mortality.

 

If they ever tell my story, let them say: I walked with giants. Men rise and fall like winter wheat, but these names will never die. We are haunted by the vastness of eternity, and so we ask ourselves, will our actions echo across the centuries.

Author's Note

I wrote this as a speech. The quotes at the beginning and end are taken from the movie Troy