"The Truth" (Part 2)

Dearly beloved,

We are gathered here today to continue the story I posted in Part 1. Or did you think “The teenager turned around and walked away, leaving the two old men to their squabble. Up until that day he had never seen the ocean and now that old man said there was an island somewhere out there?” was the end of the story? Then obviously you haven’t read any of my stories.

The teenager kept walking on the shore until late that night. He had fallen in love with the sea and, suddenly, as he was watching the sun setting over the horizon in a spectacle of red, purple and violet, his heart was filled with an inexplicably strong desire to go looking for that island.

In all his life he had never been drawn by any kind of adventure. In the small town he lived many miles inland nothing extraordinary really happened and he was used to extraordinary things never happening. But after he heard the old man’s story, a tiny flame of desire to explore started to burn inside him.

By the time he went back home several days later, that small fire was a raging inferno. He kept imagining what it would be like to actually find that island, or maybe another one just as fascinating. From that day on his purpose in life was to sail the endless ocean until he would find that magical island.

He started learning about sailing, he moved to a small house on the shore of the sea, and began building a boat. A year later, when his small boat was finished, he set off on his first journey.

He packed enough supplies to last for a few weeks, and headed for the unknown. Although he didn’t really know what direction he was supposed to be sailing, he figured that sooner or later he was bound to find something. If he didn’t find it now, maybe he’d find it later. It didn’t actually matter how many attempts it would take to find that island; he had all the time in the world.

The first journey lasted for three weeks and, although he didn’t find what he was looking for, he did find something else: insight and time to meditate. And along with them, incredible inner peace. He realized that he had set his mind on finding that magical island, but instead he’d found something much more amazing.

The weeks of traveling across the endless ocean turned into months, and the months into years. He always returned to his home island, but just because his human nature didn’t allow him to be at sea forever. And he never found that island, or any other islands magical or otherwise. Yet, he kept looking and hoping.

During his otherwise eventless voyages, he sometimes got caught in a storm for days on end, and every time the storm died out his hopes would rise. For some strange reason he always had the impression that the storm the old man had mentioned in his story was the key to finding that island, like some sort of magical passageway between the known sea and the sea where other islands existed. But none of the storms he sailed through led to any islands or magical places.

At some point he started wondering, what if that island doesn’t really exist, and the old man had only made fun of the naive eighteen-year-old boy that he was? He couldn’t see why the old man would have lied to him about the whole thing, but that–he had to admit to himself more and more often–was a possibility.

Yet the story had sounded too detailed and too real to be just a prank. And the old man didn’t ask for anything in return. He didn’t ask him to join the “club of believers in the existence of the magical island,” and start paying monthly dues for being a member. He didn’t ask him to change his beliefs now that he had heard the “good news” about the magical island. All the old man did was tell his amazing story.

“Just because I couldn’t find it doesn’t mean the island is not out there somewhere, does it?” he kept asking himself. “Seriously this cannot be a valid argument! Dear members of the jury, your honor, I know for a fact that the magical island the old man claimed to have been on does not exist in our endless ocean simply because I spent years looking for it and I never found it. And with this irrefutable argument I rest my case.”

*     *     *

Now, in the end, I want to ask you a question. If you were one of the twelve “jurors of the man’s conscience” before whom the man was “arguing his case,” what verdict would you give? You have all the facts he presented to you beginning with the evening he met the two old men on the beach. You do not know whether the old man had actually been on that island or not, because you can only see the picture from the teenager’s perspective.

You, being part of the teenager’s conscience, have been everywhere he has been and have seen and heard everything he has seen and heard. You were with him on all his journeys and ground it out through all the storms.

All you have to do now is answer a simple question: “Just because he couldn’t find it, does that mean the island is not out there somewhere?” The answer you must give is either: (1) “I am one hundred percent certain that island does not exist, because the teenager could not find it,” or (2) “I  am one hundred percent certain that island exists even if nobody else ever finds it again and even if the old man had never found it or claimed to have found it in the first place.”

(to be continued)