Everyday Thomas Malin ate a tuna fish sandwich while he drank a beer. He
didn't really care what kind of beer, it just needed to be a beer.
This was his 'philosopher's food' as he called it. Thomas wasn't like
other people, or at least that is what he told himself. What Thomas
definitely was though, was a philosopher. He liked nothing better
than to drive down the east coast and find a secluded spot. Then he
would pull out his lawn chair and a book and settle in for a good
read. After the reading though, was time for tuna and beer.
This
habit horrified his brother James. James thought Thomas was eccentric
just to get a rise out of people, and maybe he was right to some
extent. His family and most of his friends couldn't understand why
Thomas acted the way he did. They would ask him questions like "Is
there very much money in philosophy?" or "Why don't you
become a high school teacher?" These were perfectly asinine
questions in Thomas' opinion. How could he blame them though? That is
who they were. They thought a lot about money and they taught school
or did some other job they hated to make a paycheck. The thing about
Thomas Malin though, was that he truly believed he was meant to be a
philosopher. He loved Wordsworth and William Blake. He also was very
fond of Horace, but he felt like he was missing something since he
couldn't read Latin. His brother did his best to remind Thomas that all of this philosophy talk is fine, but it doesn't pay the bills.
"There
we go with the money talk again." Thomas would find himself
saying. He hated the idea of the forty hour work week. "Who
decided that human beings should give up so much of their free time
to be miserable anyway"? This was the primary reason that Thomas
couldn't hold down a job. He was a good worker and so when he wanted
to work he could. He just found he didn't have inspiration to work
for more than a month or two before it became time to move on.
Despite
being called 'fickle' by his family, he was always consistent with his
desire to be a philosopher. It was maddening to everyone around him.
They all thought he was the most rude and inconsiderate man they
knew. Driving around and setting up shop on some beach somewhere.
Then to make it worse they thought; he pretended he was crazy by
insisting on his ridiculous tuna fish ritual. Once his brother had
even threatened to have him brought in to a mental asylum, but the
two men both knew that Thomas was not actually crazy. The problem was
that his attitude was driving everyone else crazy. He was rocking the
boat.
The
thing Thomas knew that the rest of his family didn't was that living
to acquire more stuff was a vicious cycle. He knew they would work
their lives away and then all they would have left was the remnant of
their lives, not the bulk of it. Unfulfilled and sad, they would turn to entertainment
and vice to try and find happiness. That wasn't where you found it
though. Contentedness comes from your calling. It comes from the work
you are destined to do. Yes, Thomas knew philosophy would not pay his
bills, but it wrote his mental health check. It kept him sane and
happy. How much was that worth? Well, to Thomas it was worth more
than a mountain of gold.
That
was the reason that every day Thomas would bring his tuna fish and
his beer. He would drag a lawn chair and a book and he would hunt for
a place in the world where he felt he could reach past the physical
chains that tie us to this world and reach a higher plain. He liked
to call it a place where heaven and earth kiss. There he was a
philosopher. There he was happy and he could learn more than in any
other place he could have been. Then when he came back into his
real world, he could be a teacher to those whose eyes were open enough
to see and whose ears wanted to truly hear. This world has a
habit of closing the eyes of its denizens. Making those who have eyes
and ears just as blind and deaf as those born without those senses.
Thomas
knew that everyone was not meant to be a philosopher, but he also
knew that everyone has something they ought to be doing and way too
many people will never do it. The price of success is to be ridiculed
by those who
don't understand, but the price of not trying is a life of never
knowing what you could be.
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| Should you seek your own place where heaven and earth kiss, be sure it is a higher plain and not a higher plane. I hear those have snakes. |
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