The Tasks of Man

What is this that man should be?
Our days are filled with tasks.
Our nights are filled with tasks.
Even our rest is overrun with tasks.

Who among ALL the men of earth has escaped?
I tell you not one alive has walked without his multitude of errands and items. Not one rich, not one poor, not one blessed, not one cursed, not one with talent, or one without shall flee from this reality. Yet perhaps only the mind that has been left a in vegetative perception may be pardoned.

The order of man to protect himself, to feed himself, to shelter himself has at the very least been within us. Nature demands survival, and physical survival demands our precious time. The hunting, the gathering, the building, the searching, the labor of man never ends. To be a man is to be a slave to our bodies. Without rest it yearns for more, without end it’s needs are made apparent. A new day brings a new requirement.

As if this is not enough. In our epiphany we conceive security to be found in the acquiring of our needs. Lest we die of the elements, or starve in the garden we go on. Then he who has amassed the most has now perceived the most security. He who is lazy works doubly hard to envy the one who has more. He who is rebellious devises cunning to rob from another. All now seek not the item of the task, but the security given from the possession.

As if this is not enough. In our haste to gain we establish rules to our conduct for he who has the most, and he who has the least. In another great awakening we commend civility to our nature and manners to our gestures. In comical vanity we display these ideas to ourselves knowing ALL the while they are that which has destroyed civility and conquered the giving spirit. Lies pour out of our mouths from fear of our place in this newly created man made set of tasks.

Mountain upon mountain of burdensome tasks we have created from one generation to the next. Conceptions, ideas, morality, rules, laws, ethics, peace and war all come from our damning destiny of task driven existence. Behold we teach our own minds to train our minds on these things. There is no end to the sky, and it shall never end. Man shall never be satisfied with that which he has to do.

The poor in wealth must slave to he above him. The poor in mind must burden his body to the undesirable work. The poor in body must educate himself to all the vanity of man’s logic and reasoning. The poor in talent must humble himself to his fate.

The great in wealth is burdened by the meager. The formidable mind must discover the unknown. The strong in body must fend off the weak. The powerful in talent must endure all manner of evil.

He who commands must follow the conduct of another’s ideal.
He who serves must follow the conduct of another’s ideal.
Both must dwell also in the various tasks of their creation.

The man who looks to all his work and finds comfort there will grow old and not be able to accomplish it. The man who looks to all his things and finds comfort there will never cease to slave for more. The man who finds passion in drink shall lose all, and be bound to a greater task by those in authority. The rebel shall be tasked to rebel, the conformist shall be tasked to conform, the business man shall be tasked to do business, the artists shall be tasked to create, the laborer shall be tasked to labor. The powerful shall be tasked to maintain power, and the weak shall be tasked to maintain weakness.

In the end all men shall walk their lands, survey their homes, count their possessions, ponder their children, wither away and die. Nothing they have worked to do shall go with them where they go, and nothing they have done that they hold dear shall be remembered as they beheld it. The mighty will look upon their empires with the feeling it wasn’t enough, and the small shall look upon their lives as well with the same conclusion. The yin and the yang are inevitably bound to the same horrific vanity of mankind.

Thousands of men have come before me in my own bloodline, yet my own father I barely know. All of my forefathers worked their tasks and left this lineage of gaining and losing and doing it all over again.

How many more have died in the task of war? How many have not even known the tease or lie of false security because of their early demise? How many did not get a chance to discover the futility of their life?

Why is this futility and vanity of man our fate? Why are our days filled with tasks? Why must the thinker think, and the doer do? Why must even the open mind seek endlessly? Why do we schedule our tasks even for our vacations? Why do we try to manage that which cannot be managed, control that which cannot be controlled, and produce the outcome that cannot be manufactured? Why do we kiss the ass of one, and condemn the face of another for our desired task of security? Why in the end do none of our works bring pleasure?

Show me the one who has removed himself from this ordeal! Show me the one who has found the door out of the monotony to life on earth! Show me the way out of planning, and pondering, and scheming, and toiling and slaving and gaining, and losing and building and destroying and thinking and doing and saving and spending and teaching and learning and knowing and forgetting!

My God what have we done to ourselves that ALL creation has a greater spirit then we? The Animals go about doing what has been intended for them, and they never waver from their life. Yet the man does everything he does not want to do in order to become what he thinks he is supposed to be. Even his own idea of what he should become is less then that of the smallest of beasts. Man fills his days with inhuman tasks, and inhuman desires and wishes. Man shuns what is natural to him, and embraces what is burdensome to him. We flee from the course of our own nature for that which is the most vain and short-lived.

Ahead of me is the chore of man. Effort and action and need and want lay at my feet.

My wants of man I wish to abandon. My needs of man I wish to depart from. My soul dreams of home.

Even he who I give to in love believes I have done for him what he did not have. But it was always his. The love he felt, the gratitude he felt, was there in him already.

All of us are man, and all are born and die.

Ryan o0o