A BURNT OUT PEOPLE

31 January 2025

A Burnt Out People

In the earliest days, before the world had hardened into kingdoms and laws, a wandering people left the lush Valley of Eden in search of a promised land. The valley of Eden had been fertile and rich with green pastures and streams that never ran dry, but a voice, a whisper in their hearts, had urged them onward.

"Go forth and claim the land beyond the horizon, where milk and honey flow, where your children will build cities that touch the skies", it said.

And so they did.

For many years they walked. They crossed rivers, scaled mountains, and pushed on through golden plains. Each dawn, they told their children that just beyond the next hill, the promised land awaited.

But when they reached the top of the last and highest mountain, their feet bruised, their faces battered. and their garments torn, they looked down and saw before them not a land of plenty, but a land of ruin and destruction.

The once-golden fields were blackened to ash, rivers had dried to cracked earth, and the swirling winds carried the bitter scent of acrid smoke. The promised land was no more, only barren and bare remained.

A great silence fell over them.

Then, turning back to their path, they looked upon their works to see what they had been blind to before: the land behind them, that too had turned to dust. Their valley, their Eden, their first home, was gone. The trees they had rested under were now charred stumps. The rivers they would drink from so abundantly were parched channels of mud.

There was no way forward. There was no way back.

One amongst them, the eldest, fell to his knees. "We were deceived," he whispered. "The journey itself was our undoing."

And so they stood, caught between ruin and regret, the last of their kind on a road that led nowhere.

And the voice that had led them turned silent.