Some things are a matter of duty, some things are a matter of principle. Sometimes in life you need to burn the bridges and burn the ships, and then carry on in whatever path you've chosen. Indeed, sometimes two fierce rivals will hate each other but still deeply respect each other, while they may truly love a friend and yet not really respect him. Similarly, a student may love a teacher he doesn't respect, and may respect a teacher he absolutely hates, depending on how cool or how strict the teacher is. This is because for one reason or another, and maybe for reasons that are even a little irrational, we tend to see conviction as an inherently admirable thing, whether or not we are forced to. Then again, it is a strange thing to admire because some men of conviction have done truly wicked things in the same measure as some other men of conviction have done great things. It might as well be a double-edged sword, but whatever the case may be, the fact remains that conviction is indeed admirable, regardless of outcome, and it is especially admired by me as I now think of examples of it. And while I might find any such examples lacking in my own life, I'm not lacking for inspiration should I only turn to the story that inspired me to write this in the first place – Berserk.
I wasn't a big fan of the original 1997 anime the first time around, though my opinion on it has since changed drastically. Still, upon reading the manga I didn't change my mind slowly, I changed it damn near immediately. I couldn't really count all the moments that struck me like a lightning bolt, so I won't even try. But there is a singular moment of relevance here, in an arc that makes conviction its actual title no less, which is chapter 138 entitled Fierce Believer, in which one character struggling with her faith receives some guiding wisdom from a man who's very strong in his.
The chapter opens with Lady Farnese walking in the temple and being faced with the cross of the Hawk of Light, and her strange mentor Mozgus in deep prayer before it. He does this twice a day, morning and night, presumably five hundred times each, slamming his forehead onto the ground as his knees go raw and bloody, losing all their feeling until the pain gradually returns. When he's done, and in yet another moment of conviction, he tells the story of a sage who was imprisoned in that very tower, but regardless of the torments the king's men put on him, he kept proclaiming his conviction in the king's many sins until an angel of God came to whisk him away to heaven. In this sense, Mozgus cherishes pain, seeing it as a way to God, and regardless of how cruel it seems, it is in his view ultimately for a good purpose, as scars and sores are the living evidence of an undying faith.
Farnese seems to disagree though, as she goes through one of my favorite character arcs in all of Berserk. She expresses doubt in the efficacy of all her work, surely seeing all this pain and torture as, theologically, a false path to salvation, and pragmatically, a very flawed plan, as the reports of heresy and violence against men and women of the church don't seem to cease. In response to this, Mozgus tells her a story, and it is this story, this single page of utter brilliance, that always stuck with me... along with many others, of course.
He tells of how in ancient times there was a godly woman of sorts who led a life of poverty, as she traveled the land from battlefield to battlefield, seeking dying men to whom she could administer the simplest of palliative cares. Regardless of their sad, miserable state, regardless of poverty, disease, violence, she'd care for them as much as she could, with almost no intention of healing them, but merely caring for them until their final breath, which was never far away. Already we have yet another fierce believer in our chapter, and the story would be pretty great as is, but it continues on as it introduces yet another fierce believer... This is because one day the woman finds a man by the wayside, sick and surely dying, presumably after yet another of the many battles in this land. She approaches the man to administer her cares, and yet, in all that misery, the man refuses.
The fact that I am lying here rotting by the wayside is proof that I have lived a proud life of solitude and independence. Please do not disgrace my sublime moment of death with your warmth.
In my head I came up with a few bits of story that aren't actually on the page. Just one of those weird memory things... I imagined this man as a farmer drafted off into a war he couldn't care less about, just one man who calls himself king fighting another who does the same, and so their competition over a chair wrecks the land and everyone who lives therein. The farmer might as well be a capable fighter but he still falls in battle, having a spear pierced deep into his belly, and then he's just left there by the wayside, waiting for death, with his guts leaking out. I imagined this farmer being a stoic figure, a man who lived alone, having willingly refused a lot of this world, including, I suppose, the warmth of women. And so to have this beautiful lady approach and care for him in his dying moments would be to trip and fall down when he was so close to the finish line, especially seeing as in his sorry state he's physically incapable of resisting the woman's actions. As to the woman herself I imagined her as an impossible beauty, though her face is in reality a black void, and I also imagined her immediately respecting the dying farmer's wishes, and simply walking away to care for another dying man on the other side of the road.
But that's just me... Continuing on the actual page, Mozgus attributes all this to God. Like the sage went through torture, and like Mozgus goes through a painful daily supplication, so too did the farmer suffer through the disdain of worldly things as a sacrifice. Surely that sacrifice must have meant something, it must have been done in favor of something, and God is as good a thing as any, I suppose. But more than sacrifice I think of conviction, I think of how this man spent an entire life of asceticism, and in a very cruel world no less. And when his final day came he didn't see his suffering as an excuse to fall at the last hurdle... No, he instead saw that last hurdle as more of the same, as more of what he already spent his entire life overcoming. And as to the woman, he saw her almost as a temptress, as someone who would, even by no fault of her own, disgrace the man's dying moments... I suppose a lesser man would welcome her warmth to then die in whatever little bliss she could administer, a bliss that, though too little to change the man's sorry state, would still be so great as to make him feel lucky that a beautiful woman appeared to him to witness his last breath. But this man, so strong in his convictions, chooses to die alone rather than to allow this woman to corrupt his way of life.
Then again, maybe he's not such a great man, maybe he's the lesser man for being so stubborn, and all the happy idiots of the world who have experienced love and beauty are in fact the true geniuses. Maybe this instance of conviction isn't all that and the farmer is a bigger idiot than the rest of them. It must be true to at least some people, especially seeing as most people find a life of solitude to be a truly strange thing... It is indeed funny to me now, because my understanding is that people call themselves subjectivists with regards to little things, to meaningless things, or even to things about which they want to hear no judgment. But at an impulse their thoughts betray them and they reveal that what they value in themselves they likewise value in others, and so to witness others living a life different than theirs comes across as, not just strange, but even bad too, or at least as a big waste. I suppose at the end of the day there are no subjectivists in foxholes... Eventually everyone values what they value, and it resurfaces in stories like this man's life and death, as his refusal makes little to no sense to most people.
But what can anyone do or say? Sometimes things really are a matter of principle. Surely this man made a decision at some point in his life to forgo certain worldly pleasures, and regardless of the logic behind it, it is the case that he lived his life obeying his principles, maybe because to turn back would be the real defeat. And if he never turned back at any point in his life, to do so at the end when he's tired and dying, that would be a bigger loss than anything else, that would be sacrificing everything to live a life of solitude and independence only to lose it at the end when he was so close to ending a life lived his way and nobody else's. I suppose at some point matters of principle are ends in and of themselves, kinda like Guts forging his own path, learning to swing a sword for himself, and thus living life his way. Likewise so did this man, up to the moment of dying.
I should now confess I think about this a lot as it relates to my writing, this thing of conviction and sacrifice, this bond between the two concepts... Writing is a difficult thing to do, but it just makes sense to me, and it's an even more difficult thing to find success in, but I continue anyway. At times it's almost tempting to think back on my life and to wonder if I should have done this or that differently, I think of some moments in which I now find myself leaning towards the idea of regret. But then I think of how if I had done some things differently, even if ever so slightly, I wouldn't have written my three books, and so even if I had the power to turn back time, I'd likely refuse because my conviction is made stronger, and because the worst thing at this point would be to have lost my books. To never find success in them, to never be acknowledged, to never earn a living, that is only the second worst thing... Anyway, time will tell, but one thing is certain – if a nun came to me like in the story, and if she promised me a great wealth in exchange for never having written a single page, I would have said no. What I sacrificed I now live without, gladly or not, because in the end that hardly matters. And as I've grown very fond of saying, it is what it is.
I imagine that a lot of people would answer similarly about the things they care the most about, the things on which their entire sense of conviction hangs. Because a man, or a woman for that matter, who sells his conviction also sells his soul along with it, and nothing else can be more valuable than your own soul, in which your conviction resides. And by extension, once your conviction goes, so does everything else. And thus, while we can't help but admire the man on the wayside, we also can't help but admire the woman, though their convictions are opposed in such a way as to make walking away from each other the only viable option. It's very much a case of an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object, both equally strong in their diametrically opposed convictions, both of them fierce believers in the thing that has always guided them throughout their lives. So the key is to find that thing in all our lives, that thing worth suffering for, that thing worth sacrificing for, no matter the suffering, no matter the sacrifice, no matter even if we suffer a lot and sacrifice a whole lot more, and it still doesn't amount to anything...
And when thinking of lives we might as well think of deaths, because a conviction is, or maybe it should be, something you take with you to your grave. It's something you dedicate your entire life to, even at the potential cost of itself, but certainly at the cost of many other things. Conviction and sacrifice are therefore sisters, because whatever you believe in, whatever you dedicate your life to, it will almost certainly involve ignoring or outright rejecting other things, things that might be powerful and lofty for other men but they won't be for you, things that to you would only be distractions at best, and slow deaths at worst. I suppose it's very much an all-or-nothing, and if our true conviction is that one thing, then we should be willing to sacrifice everything.
As for me, I couldn't have done it any other way, and for that reason I hereby choose to have no regrets.
Comments
Post a Comment