You Just Might Learn Something

Today we con­tinue our story with the Man and his jour­ney to Mount Suc­cess. He and his faith­ful horse have just taken their first steps into the Swamp of Fail­ure. Let’s see how our hero does.

If you are just join­ing in this story, you may want to start from the begin­ning. Here is what’s posted so far:

The Intro
The Plains of Overwhelming

Let’s con­tinue shall we?

He and his faith­ful horse slowly make their way through the swamp. It’s so thick they have to take one step at a time. Not only is it very muddy, it’s also very stinky. The swamp water and mud reek of old earth and dead trees. It’s enough to take one’s breath away.

Even at this early stage the trek has made some thoughts creep into the Man’s head. “Is it even worth it? Am I wast­ing my time? Should I really be doing this?”

He quickly blows these thoughts off but he can’t help but think about them once in a while. And he senses some­thing nearby. Some­one watch­ing him.

Both horse and hero walk slowly with their heads bowed, con­cen­trat­ing on mov­ing for­ward fol­low­ing the trail of flow­ers. A voice echoes through the trees and stops The Man in his tracks.

“You look like you could use a bite to eat!”

He looks around and sees a man stand­ing by a stand full of fruit and water. He swore he could smell meat too.

“Come, come, enjoy this food and the jour­ney through this swamp will be that much eas­ier. You’ll be done before you know it!”

It wasn’t until he saw this con­ve­nient sup­ply of food that real­ized how hun­gry he really was. He almost started turn­ing towards the deli­cious cart of food when he felt a tug from his horse. He turned around to look at the horse and it stared at him with a warn­ing glance.

“Come sir,” The cart man con­tin­ued, “Just one lit­tle bite is all. The finest tast­ing fruit you’ll ever have!”

The horse nudged our hero again, remind­ing him of the temp­ta­tions he had read about in the book. This was too easy, he thought.

The cart man seemed to have real­ized his thoughts as he gave him a nasty sneer. With a swing of his hand both him and the cart dis­ap­peared in a puff of smoke.

Whew, that was close. The man looked back at the path at his feet. The book said to watch the white flow­ers, they will lead out of the swamp. He fol­lowed the trail until it dis­ap­peared into the trees a few feet ahead of him.

The Man and his horse pushed on through the swamp, slowly, tediously. More and more doubts crept into his mind as he trudged on. Even his faith­ful horse seemed to slow­ing as he grew more and more tired. It seemed like the the mud was get­ting deeper.

The cart man kept show­ing up with more tempt­ing offers and he kept get­ting closer, offer­ing bet­ter and bet­ter offers to pull The Man away from the path. He kept get­ting closer and each time he became more trans­par­ent. It was the ghost of the swamp.

Even­tu­ally The Man was hear­ing the whis­pers from the ghost in his ear, taunt­ing him, telling him to give up. He tried to ignore it. But some­times he wanted to give up.

Between the ghostly fig­ure that seemed to be in his head and the mud that was mak­ing it’s way up his thighs, he started won­der­ing if he should just stop and let the grimy water take him. It would be eas­ier. Eas­ier than this hard work. Even eas­ier than tak­ing the short­cuts the ghost kept try­ing to show him.

But he kept his eyes on the white flower trail lead­ing through the trees. His shoul­ders felt heavy and he kept hav­ing thoughts of run­ning off the path into obliv­ion. It was just the ghost he reminded him­self. A small nudge from the horse kept him mov­ing forward.

He was so tired and focused on mov­ing one step after another after the trail of flow­ers that he almost ran into the tree that the flow­ers led to. He looked up blink­ing the weari­ness out of his eyes.

The tree almost glowed in the drea­ri­ness of the swamp. It was fresh and alive. It had a big trunk and was cov­ered in white flow­ers sim­i­lar to the ones he had been fol­low­ing. It was beautiful.

Pro­trud­ing from the trunk was a small branch. Hang­ing from the branch was a neck­lace with a small pen­dant on it. He hes­i­tated to touch it when he heard the quiet voice of the ghost in his ears. He could feel the weight on his back with each word.

“Don’t touch that. Do you really want to do things that way?” The ghost whispered.

In this sim­ple state­ment, our hero sensed some fear and knew this to be the neck­lace of con­fi­dence. He quickly grabbed it up and read the inscrip­tion on the back.

You have the power to cre­ate your own path. The hard times are only there if you let them. The path is clear if you want it to be. You have the power to make things work for you.

With that sim­ple state­ment he had a sim­ple real­iza­tion. He heard a snarl fade in his ears and weight lift off his back. He had a choice. He could stay here and con­tin­u­ally strug­gle or he could find a way to make things work his way and make his own path out of the swamp.

He walked around the tree to look beyond. It seemed even the mud was becom­ing less deep with each step. He looked beyond the trees and envi­sioned what he wanted. Before his eyes the edge of the swamp seemed to come into view. So simple.

It wasn’t long before his feet his solid ground and he heard the click clack of his horses hooves. They had finally made it out. The Man took a great big deep breath and closed his eyes.

When he opened them again he saw a great green for­est ahead of him. It looked beau­ti­ful. It looked invit­ing. He took a step and noticed the sun­light hit­ting some­thing nearby.

He looked over and saw a huge book, a tomb of knowl­edge. It had fol­lowed him. He fig­ured it was time for a break any­ways so he sat down in front of the book and flipped through the giant pages.

~Chris

The For­est of Expe­ri­ence lays beyond. It looks like a per­fectly nor­mal for­est but what obsta­cles does it hold for our hero? Stay tuned to find out.

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