"You're completely useless, you trash! 'Please wait a little more'? How many times have you said those words since you were born? Society is not your mother. It will not continue to wait for you trash while you try and decide. Just go off and equivocate for the rest of your lives. You will continue to lose all your valuable opportunities."
...
"Your pleas for mercy are off the mark. You give up? That's not going to work when you play for keeps, you fools. You're all sick."
"Sick?"
"Their sickness is how they can never get serious, no matter what their circumstances may be. It's a match with lives on the line. We've already told them what will happen if they lose, and yet they still think they can just give up. In other words, they're not serious. Even on the bridge where they face certain death, they talk nonsense because they can't become serious! It's nothing but a fictional match to them.
Normally, those people would never wake up from their fantasy worlds. They live meaningless lives. They waste their precious days over nothing. No matter how old they get, they'll continue to say... 'My real life hasn't started yet.' 'The real me is still asleep, so that's why my life is such garbage.' They continue to tell themselves that. They continue. And they age. Then die. And on their deathbeds, they will finally realize. The life they lived was the real thing.
People don't live provisional lives, nor do they die provisional deaths. That's a simple fact! The problem...
...is whether they realize that simple fact."
(The Triad fansubs)
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The trader stared his customer in the face. A man of youthful pride, a glimmer of idealism in his eyes, a bright future ahead of him. He took out a cigar and lit it.
"So, young one. What brings you here?"
The young'un smiled with a bright beam. "You're the man who can grant wishes to anyone, right? I've heard about you. Magic, they call it. Would it work on me? I wonder. I sure hope so."
"Is it a dream you have, young one?" The trader took out a pencil and paper, then continued to stare into the youth's eyes; the beauty of idealism in it.
"Of course, mister. Don't we all have them? Big, small, beautiful or ugly, everyone has their own unique dream that they want to achieve." The trader wrote a point or two down on his paper, making sure the youth couldn't tell what he was writing exactly.
"Beautiful things indeed, these dreams. What are they to you?" The young man seemed to be getting impatient, but the trader ignored that, throwing the cigar to a corner at the back before staring the youth in the eye again.
"The backbone of progress, mister. That it be both the will of Cinderella and the oath of America is testament to its strength. Driving me on to tomorrow, mister - that's what I feel it does. The light at the end of the tunnel without which I would be lost in darkness forever." The world around the two continued to move - the marketplace lively as ever - yet between the two was silence save the sound of pencil grinding against paper.
"Fitting words, that they should come from the mouth of a youth like you too." He scribbled a few more lines and smiled, half mockingly. This can go either way. "What do you propose you would do to grasp such a dream within your hands, then?"
"To go till the end, I say! To scale the heights of heavens; to brave the depths of hell; to go where East meets West and where the fire craves the ice. To suffer in melodious silence and etch a mark in eternity of it!"
The trader lit another cigar and blew the smoke in the youth's face.
"So, youth, that's what you're going to do, eh." Another puff of smoke. "Well I'll tell ya something, kid. Whatcha call the thing that keeps ya going again?"
"Dreams?" the youth looked somewhat confused.
"No, the other one. Firmness. Determination. Starts with R or something."
"Resolve?"
"Yea, that's the one. Whatcha think of it?"
"I don't get what you mean, Mister."
"Then I'll teach you, young 'un. To survive in the world you need food, water and shelter. But there're three things in the world you need to progress. Any ideas?"
"Dreams? Resolve? And..."
"Wisdom's the third, with good reason. I'll ask ya another thing. You called me the man who can grant wishes to anyone. But what am I fundamentally?"
"...a trader? Merchant?"
"Nah, lad. I ain't gonna be that high to ya, but if you want to think of it that way I guess you could say that. Tell me then. What was it that you would do for your dreams again?"
"I'd hate to repeat myself, mister. To the end of the world suffice."
"Then I must say, my lad, that you have no resolve."
The youth was immediately appalled. "Excuse me sir, I do believe that's a rather unjust statement to make."
"Yet it is the truest of truths. Why are you here? To see me. Why? Because I'm a trader. Why? Because apparently I can grant wishes to anyone. Why? Because you can't grant them yourself. There is something about you, lad, that tells me all you have are dreams. There's no resolve, there's no wisdom." The youth was shocked for a moment, and the trader noticed the small tremblings between his fingers.
"Have you ever thought about going to the ends of the world? Have you ever thought about your weary feet? Have you ever thought about the thirst, the hunger, the loneliness? Have you ever thought about how you are going to remotely come close to doing the things you say? Have you ever thought about doing something along with saying it?"
A shot of silence - then a sigh, and a puff of smoke. "Guess not, huh. You're a desperate person, you know that? Coming to a trader to get a dream true. Escaping from the effort that you'd have to put in otherwise. Guess what? I'm a trader - there's something called a transaction. There's never been a way out of this. A shortcut. Time won't wait for you to hope for your dreams to come your way on a silver platter, the light at the end of the tunnel is going to stay at the end of the tunnel. And you can't get to the end of that tunnel because you ain't got the resolve, lad. Resolve ain't something to be made with your head. It's something to be made with your attitude.
Stop looking for shortcuts and traders to give you your stuff; dreams can't be caught that easily. Stop talking about reaching the end of the tunnel without taking the step; resolve isn't created that easily. Stop thinking that as long as you get to the end taking shortcuts is fine; wisdom doesn't come that easily."
The trader stared the youth in the eye again. It seemed slightly darker - the glimmer that used to be there... a puff of smoke.
"Resolve, lad, has a meaning apart from determination. It means conclusion too - the ability to end what one starts, the endurance to walk the entire path, the patience to not drop halfway. The word resolve isn't the destination nor is it the journey; it's both. It's the thing that keeps one going in spite of all the sacrifices. Do you have something to head towards? That's a dream. Would you give up everything to head towards something? That's resolve. Would you stop when there is nothing that can push you forward anymore? That's wisdom. Without the latter two, you are but a drunkard thinking he is king."
"Dare you go sober and partake in the elections for kingship? In spite of everything? I suppose not. To do that would really show the lack of wisdom in you. Life will never wait for you, but it will not necessarily reward you for doing things you will never do again. Now go, and I pray that one day you will find something called resolve."
The youth never found resolve, but on that day he traded his dreams he had and received wisdom in exchange; a kind of wisdom that comes from years of experience and fear.
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Any more and this will be too much of a self-criticism.
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