So many in the past, so many today,
and the countless numbers to come,
all have and will wonder, as I have, but one thing.
What is truly the greatest of curses?
could it be a life of slavery,
one of constant anguish,
or even the life of a crippled one?
None are correct.
Curses upon a man they all may be,
Great malignancies that they are,
but none are the greatest that one may ever suffer.
A slave may be freed, and henceforth has hope.
A man in pain can be tended to,
And so he may find peace.
The crippled can be aided,
And therefore find happiness.
The answer is solitude,
either that which means stark loneliness,
or that which means never feeling love.
Such a curse as this is so great that it is capable of stripping
away all but the vaguest traces of a man’s soul, and burning
away his heart to dust and ash.
This curse of loneliness can leave a man colder than the frozen top of the world,
harder that the thickest of mountains,
And more empty than the deepest, darkest hole in the earth.
A life alone is truly the greatest curse a man can ever suffer,
for it puts him through the worst of all fates,
to live on, when he is already dead.
