Someday, I want to build myself a little room.
Never mind how I'll get the money, or if I'll ever find myself fortunate to even put this plan of mine into action. Never mind the implausibilities, the trials that I will have to inevitably undertake, the future that I must craft for myself.
For now, I dream of a little room.
It will, to most people, appear useless. I won't sleep in it. I won't eat in it. Its contents will solely be paper, stone, overhead lights, and a single lamp. I won't use it to write. I won't use it to game. I won't do much more with the room than simply let it exist and visit a few times.
However, this room will not be useless, contrary to what most would believe. It is the habitation of a particular thing, an entity that deserves a home anywhere and everywhere. For, as I plan, I will allot in this simple room a place for part of my conscience to dwell.
The room will be circular. Round, like a circle, the shape with no edges and a single side that goes on forever and ever. The lights will be dimmed- not bright, but not dark, either. Dimmed lights in mourning, enduring on the sustained vigor of hope.
Around the circular walls will be paintings and posters, all depicting the horrors and ills of the world. They will pay harsh tribute to the suffering and the starving, those in pain and those at the doorstep of death. They will solemnly note the grim shades of society, the endless wells made of the penniless. They will acknowledge the terminally ill and the permanently fettered. They will depict those without hope of escape from their tortures, both physical and mental. These posters, in short, will point accusatory fingers at the shattered pieces of humanity, broken and eroded and beaten over time and through memory.
The single lamp will shine its ray of light upon a simple stone altar, shaped like an hourglass in the middle of the room. This altar will start out empty. Over time, it is my hope that it will become full. I hope to, after the creation of this room, do my best to contribute to society and eradicate all the pain in this world. With each problem I help solve or do my part in, I will take down that poster from the wall of the room and place it down in the shadows. Then I will go to the altar and lay down what I have contributed. A photocopied check to charity- a copy of a patent for a disease-curing drug- a memento from a child to whom I brought hope and a future where there was none. Any of these, or perhaps all of these, would litter that illuminated stone table. It is my dream, it is my hope, it is my solemn promise and goal and dedication.
Who knows whether I will someday build this little room of mine. Maybe I will forget. Maybe I will never find myself able to. But at the very least, I have already built it, in a sense. It already has been constructed in a corner of my heart, and it stays there like an oath that I have taken between myself and those who have found life to be their greatest oppressor. In the end, it will be my offering that I hope to make good on before I pass from this world to dust and unknowing.
