Lucifer

Lucifer

I had a bad dream. It was horrible. I dreamt I burnt a school to the ground. Worse, the students, teachers and I included were in the premises. What was the motivation? I don’t know. Why did I do it? I don’t know. The fire was an inferno that burned everyone to their bones. I can still hear the cries of anguish. The cries of torment and hell. The school was locked and razor fences surrounded the perimeter. It was hard to escape, nearly impossible. Everyone was cooped in the boiling pot until it turned to aches. The fire, it was everywhere. I couldn’t breathe and my vision was blurry and tainted. It was a movie in the theatre of my mind. I managed to escape. It the midst of all that chaos, I located a spot that was devoid of razor fencing; instead stood a wall so I climbed over it and made it to another person’s property – following me was a blind person, his life was spared to. Now in a different demarcation we ran towards the gate to escape the chaos. Till we were stopped by a muscular colored guy. He pointed a rifle gun to my head and stated that I was not going anywhere. He told me that he knew that I was the one who had started the fire and let go the blind guy. I was perplexed. How did he know? He said he knew it from his soul. I looked over at the school from the muscular colored’s premises and everyone and everything was burned to a crisp. No survivors. It was like a battlefield that was bombarded with nuclear – it was quiet with no sign of life. The place was dead and unresponsive. It was horrible. I had burned down a place of education, a place of growth and sustainability. I had burned down a place of hope. I burned down knowledge, culture and heritage. I murdered my friends. I murdered my teachers. I robbed people of their potential, their lives. I altered the future for a lot of families. I don’t know why I burned the school. I remember having petrol and matches and I set the school alight. Even in my dreams, I knew the screams of the people who were burning would haunt me forever. That I would have PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) and it would change my life forever, that it would hinder me from appreciating all of life. I feared that this incident would scar my mind. Dying would be better. I begged the big colored guy to end my life. However, he didn’t. He just kept the gun on my face and held me hostage. I thought that maybe I should force his hand and try to run; that he would shoot me from behind and end my life, but I was scared of death. So I just stood there with the gun on my face on the one hand and the carnage and destruction on the other. I felt trapped and I woke up.

Why did I do it? Am I bad person? Am I an evil person? What is the difference between bad and evil? Bad is an adjective that describes your nature as a human being. It is straightforward, it is a fact, it is objective, it is the stripes on the zebra, the sun in the sky and the fish in the ocean. While evil has to do with acts of ethics and morality. Evil is premeditated behavior and actions, it is hiding evidence, lying to preserve your way, cheating and murder. A sequence of evil acts make you a bad person. If lying and murder becomes habit, you are a bad person. Evil can be undone with a sequence of good deeds and targeted incentives. Bad is set in stone, it is difficult to redeem if not impossible, it is hopeless with no will of life. It is with this definition that I try to analyze who I am. Surely, an evil act of this magnitude makes me a bad irredeemable person. Bad and rotten to the core. I senselessly murdered thousands in an academic institution – a place of education and self-betterment. I ruined the future of many families. I am just like Josef Stalin who starved his people until death. A narcissistic, egotistical maniac who killed millions in the Soviet Union to conserve his way. Was Lucifer bad or evil? Lucifer was an angel of God, who sang mightily beautiful and he/she committed a big evil act. Lucifer had been good in the past, what if he/she was redeemable. Did God give up on Lucifer? Maybe, I am Lucifer – In my dream I committed a horrendous act of evil, an act that is unforgivable. Am I unworthy of God’s love?

It seems as though if you don’t know who you are, the world and even God is happy to categorize you in box. I think the notion that we are all born sinners is the right one. Simply because inside each and every one of us lurks evil. And if the evil is disproportional to the norms and confines society has constructed you run the risk of being barred. It happened to Lucifer. You have a Lucifer in your soul. It is in this vein that we must approach life intelligently and try to avoid chaos. While chaos is all that defines the structure of existence we must try to instill a bit of order in ourselves. Assume the person you are talking to knows something that you don’t. Listen and don’t make judgements. Approach everyone with respect. Don’t offend the wrong person. Not because you are scared but because you want an orderly life. Insecure fools and idiots roam the streets, motivated by Lucifer in their souls they aim to insight evil. They want to immerse you in petty squabbles. Repressed and unconscious they want to project their powers onto you. The best way to solve such things is to shun them off. Not because you can’t stand up for yourself but because you won’t react. Reacting puts you at a disadvantage because you run the risk of running into a trap that was specially designed for you. You will get them at your own terms, playing by your rules. We are mortal and fragile. A shot to the head might end it all. A knife in the heart might end it all. As people we are all evil, some more evil and others just bad. Consciousness has given us the powers of sympathy and empathy meaning we know how to hurt a fellow human being because we can be hurt too. I struggle with understanding morality, the subject of good and evil because fundamentally I am guilty. Hence, my answer is the life of order. The life of the hero, fundamentally correct because he tries to restore order.

I find the symbolism of the blind guy in my dream who escaped the inferno amazing. The mind is so intelligent. The dream was about my struggle for good and evil and besides me was a blind who was on a journey with me, who abstractly “saw” everything and yet he left undeterred, unharmed, saved. While I was tormented by screams and cries of people burning to their bones. I think the message was clear, “Ignorance is bliss” and it works particularly well in the subject of good, bad and evil. We see this every time on court cases where the defense asks for an insanity plea and it gets granted for a murder committed in cold blood. We see sleep-walking patients butchering their families and walking free in court. Does it mean that idiots, mentally challenged patients and people devoid of sensory abilities are devoid and exempted from morality? Is being ignorant the key to happiness in the world? Is being crazy the key to fulfillment? Is being an idiot, a complete fool the key to bypassing the issues that plague humanity?

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