/lit/ - Literature

"Know the world." That's what they told him always. To go out there, and see it for himself. The sunsets and sunrises over distant lands, the people, the tastes and the smells. The beauty of the world, the paradises at the end of the world.

He took it to heart and was in one now. His steps beat out a regular, unrelenting rhythm as he walked calmly and slowly on the concrete path, just centimetres from the edge, beyond which was only clear blue water and fine yellow sand.

He stopped for a moment and gazed southward. Towards the horizon that separated the water under the vault from the water above it. The blue yonder, where the sky met the sea. The clear, endless ocean where an eye met no eye.

He turned his head back to the land and continued on his stroll across the walkway. Eventually the sharp coastline ended and the walkway veered off to the left, exposing a sandy beach on his right hand. The beat of his steps didn't stop for a moment.

The people walked from in front. He did not speak their language and did not understand the signs written on the buildings. The people laughed around him, paying no attention to the lost, foreign wanderer invading their peaceful island. There were many more like him - perhaps they have already got used to it.

It was here, in this solitude among people where he found his calling. Where the boy met the world and became a man. Became a man to serve the world. It was his home, all of it, and the people around were his family, even though distant and never understood.

They told him the meaning was to know the world. He shrugged it off.

The meaning was to know the world for what it is.