How about I tell you a story?

There once was a man… He was just a man, not a great man, not an evil man, nor was he a good man. He was just a man, because most men are. It is hard to look at someone for who they really are. Many can see what you appear to be, but few can touch what you really are.

He stumbled through life, like most men do. He passed from thing to thing. He wandered from place to place and he lived from hand to mouth. He sometimes wondered where his calling was, why he was here, and what he should be doing, but not often. He watched his life go by bit by bit. He did not know such a word as destiny.

He lived and loved and he wore it all out. He drank too much and gambled with things more precious than he knew. He threw around love and life and youth like they were cheap stakes. He was tired a lot. Few people know what it is like to be truly tired. He fought all the wrong fights and never knew when to quit.

And when he lost, as he usually did, he’d sit in the open and still night and ask, “God, why does it always rain on me?”

And when the night was just as still and cold and no answer came, he would curse drunkenly and find some hovel to wait in until the sun woke him for another day. Another day to wander and watch pass by.

And when the Panic came he ran and wandered and lived hand to mouth. He gambled and drank and fought and lost. And through the darkness, fear, and hunger he would ask, “God, why does it always rain on me?”

And he would curse soberly the silence and wait for the sun to wake him for another day. Another day to fear and watch pass by. Another day to run; there always was running to be done.

The world around him crumbled along with the hopes and prayers of all those that he met. Even so, he managed to love and drink and gamble. With the days he lost his youth. With the drinking he lost his loves. He lost a lot of things.

He lost more than the young man he had been would have thought possible and he realized why he was there and what he should be doing. He understood the power he had all the time and the waste of his watching. He felt the loss, but that night as he lay beneath the stars he did not question the sky or curse the silence that followed.

When the sun woke him in the morning he felt strong and he left the protection of the fires and the walls to find this word called destiny. He left the gates to fight his monsters and the creeping death outside. He took it straight into their teeth. He was the unstoppable force and they the immovable object.

The immovable object, however, is a fact. The unstoppable force is a passing rage. The man who was just a man died that day and no one will ever remember his name.

You can’t fight the storm. You can never fight the storm.

I thought you always liked it when I tell stories?