welcome to the club

you first learned about it a very long time and very many miles ago. from friends, from strangers, from stories, from rumors. you didn't know. all you knew was that it began as a glimmer that grew to a gleam and then to a glow, until one day you found it had become something that you just had to know.

you talked about it. you thought about it. you dreamed about it. you wondered what it would be like.

and more importantly, you wondered what it would mean.

you just had to know.

and so you began. despite your doubts. despite your fears. about yourself. about your life. about your world.

you began the distance, commencing in the darkness before the beginning of creation, as cold and as chilly as the spirit passing through the earth.

and it continued, over a course laid out across the land so vast it reached from one horizon to another, measured in numbers so inconceivable it struck awe to even attempt to comprehend it.

and it endured, from the break of dawn to the gathering of the dusk, in moments that passed as inevitably, indelibly, ineffably as the flickering of the mundane lost in the forever of eternity.

and it lasted, in toil in sweat in body in mind in exhaustion in suffering in passion so intense so great so overwhelming so powerful so unexpected so unknown so undescribable so unidentifiable that it became simply, singly, supremely, serenely profound, so much so that it reached the deepest secrets of the soul, and revealed nothing more nothing less nothing else than the truth that underlies all truths.

and that's when you realized that you know. in the way that only someone who's experienced it, lived it, became it could ever really know.

you know. in the way that only someone who's gone the distance and reached the finish could ever really know.

you know. in the way that only someone who realizes that it was all just another step into creation could ever really know.

you know.

you know what it means:

welcome to the club.