I used to want to be a messiah. I wanted to save the world and everyone in it. At the time, I had the power to do it. To be honest, I still have the power, but now, like then, the world doesn't want a messiah and the people don't want to be saved. I think, instead, I'll be the Universal Jester, laughing at all the people dying because they wouldn't let me save them, laughing with the people laughing at me, and laughing at the rest as they laugh with me at the others. It's not a very happy view of life, but optimism in a time when the earth can be destroyed twelve times over just doesn't seem to fit into the natural scheme of things, if you know what I mean. A certain bit of pessimistic cynicism is necessary to maintain this reality. I am that small bit in a concentrated package, especially on a night like tonight. Don't ask me why, because I don't know; I'm just feeling very pessimistic and very cynical this evening.

Eyes are the mirrors of, and windows to, the soul. They carry in them an ever-shining light of who and what you are, despite your efforts to change that. Through them, all of what you are can be seen clearly by one trained or gifted in being able to see into them. It doesn't take much to look and understand. We are all born with some innate empathic abilities, some with more than others, but all with some. These abilities to sense emotion, feeling, and discomfort, both mental and physical as well as emotional, are, though not prerequisite to the ability itself, helpful in exercising it. It is a powerful gift and as such can be exercised and abused. You must be careful in how you use it, else it may turn back on you and you will be pulled into your own feelings and emotions and trapped there, forever to be alone in your own mind. Don't look at me like that. Think about it- you'll realize that it makes sense.

Also innate within each of us is the overwhelming power to love and hate with as much force behind one as the other. However, we are also equipped with a deterrence device known in English as our conscience that prevents the "normal" person from "overdosing," as it were, on hate. It is an uncomfortable emotion at best if directed at someone other than ourselves, and self-defeating to itself if directed at ourselves. Hate kills, if I may be allowed to oversimplify this entire Installment. Hate kills, and takes with it all that was good and loving in a person. Nothing is left, not even a shell of a person. Hate is all-consuming, like the fires of the Phoenix, though the syllogism stops there. The Phoenix is reborn out of its ashes. Hate, on the other hand, destroys its host, as well as those around the host, guaranteeing not a single survivor. Hate is the real enemy, not nuclear warheads or brass keys and red buttons. We must conquer hate within ourselves before conquering the rest of our problems, but once we do overcome that hate, the rest is not only easy, but natural. Peace is a natural offspring of the cessation of war. Love is that natural offspring of the cessation of hate. Think about it.

I leave now, tired and angry (not hating, just angry) at myself for not being all that I can be and wish I was. Take care, all of you, and remember that we are all messiahs in this world, whether it wants one or not. The change has to start small, but if it starts small within all of us, then the effect is larger than the sum of its parts. As a madman, I know this to be true. In a world gone mad, it is necessary for us to change. As a madman in a world gone mad, I am the only one sane.

Howard Scott
23 June 1988