Will you make it somewhere great? Greatness requires a stomach for darkness, and worse: light. It sits far afield, through tunnels so dark they are quiet.
To turn back once is to turn back a thousand times, and on oneself, into the tunnels of his heart, darker still than the tunnel he sees in front of him. Lions, however scarred from their journey, come out the far end, or so they tell me; sheep, the nearer.
Any great place is made great by the lion, his presence reassuring, his mane a warm sun to all nearby; even his prey appreciate his swift kill and warm jaw, his textured tongue, even his taste for sheep—can you imagine; warm death in the jaws of a thorough and violent god? Ecstasy! The rites of heaven!
A lamb into darkness despite his cold sheered skin—more than a lion already!
But some, they spook, and once that shiver falls over him, it tangles his hooves, weaves his mind into its own trap. Will you make it somewhere great? Certainly not if you spook. Perhaps you have already—then do consider the flock; the dawning sun king needs no shivering sheep beside him on his journey, and no follower beside him at his coronation; for the journey is unsure enough—as is the crown.
Perhaps you approach the mouth just now. Isn’t it clear? It is either, my fellow man, the mouth of the cave or the jaws of the lion.
And so above I am mistaken; we are, all of us, destined to make it somewhere great—in life, we will all be met with a dark place, and having wondered in it by however much fault or innocence of our own, we will meet our lion.
Surrounded by greatness we will be—reveling gaily in it, in ourselves, or in submission to its teeth; but surrounded.
Pay nevermind of the hyenas.