‘The world is much smaller than you know, boy, and you are much larger than you think.’
He isn’t sure what the old man means by this, as they sit in the cabin of the rover, the windows misting over with the heat rising from the kebabs in their laps. The old man wipes away the condensation and reveals the stars in the night sky above them.
‘It’s big,’ says the boy of the sky.
The old man nods, chewing absently. ‘Huge. And full of terror.’
The boy feels a spike of fear as the eyes of the stars seem to reach him from the depths of their dark heaven.
‘And yet,’ says the old man, ‘for all the horrors it contains, all the great powers of nature, and our own fragile vulnerability, this mess of coincidence has made you, my lad.’
The boy looks at him. ‘Me and everyone else.’
‘But there’s no one like you,’ says the old man, ‘not even the you that was a moment ago, or the you that will be in the next moment, there is the you that is now, and in all great game of things, there is only you. And that you can never be held down, never destroyed, or altered, it is made eternal by the moment, and it can never be taken away. Cherish it. Know it. You are the greatest gift to yourself, and the universe is better for it.’
Paddy Dobson
7th October 2021