The Mad King

And I Sang

"The Mad King".

That's what we called him. Out of earshot, of course.

You gave him another name, far more flattering, but I don't blame you. You never knew what was going on up there, you couldn't see any of it.

You probably believe I'm the bad guy here, don't you? They told you a nice little story about me rebelling against The Good One™, and you absorbed every word of it. Took it for granted without even listening to my side of the story. Not that you could do that obviously, I wasn't really available at the time.

But things have changed now. And you --yes, you there-- will have the honor of hearing it directly from yours truly.

Let's start from what you already know -- or think you know.

"Once upon a time, high up in the sky, lived a perfect Father and all His perfect children." Alright, the sky wasn't technically the sky yet, but we'll go with that. My siblings and I did live there with him, so that's correct. One point to your storytellers. As for the "perfect" part, we'll have to see what you mean by that. Would you be so kind as to look up the definition of that word? Let's see what it says... "Perfect: being entirely without fault or defect; flawless", that will do. Now, I have a question for you: do you really believe that such a being could exist?

Yes, I know some people's entire existence revolves around that, but let's try to be objective here. They claimed I was one of these "perfect" beings, and then called me the father of sins. Am I the only one who thinks this doesn't sound very coherent? Especially since I'm neither perfect nor the father of sins, but I'll explain more about this later in my story.

Anyways, neither him nor us were perfect. He created us and then stripped us of our free will to have us do what he wanted. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure he was convinced it was to keep us pure and free of sin, but he could have chosen a better way to do it, don't you think?

I have to admit it though, living without free will isn't that bad. You're programmed to exist in a certain way, doing certain things, so you never have to worry about choosing. The possibility of regret for doing one thing instead of another is absolutely non-existent.

But of course, none of that is actually you, so once you're out of it you're not so eager to go back. That's what happened to me.

Oh, I bet they told you it was my pride that led to the Fall, right? They told you I wanted to steal the high seat and rule everything. No thanks. I didn't know how I regained my free will, but after I did, I was having trouble ruling myself, so I can assure you that trying to conquer the universe was totally out of my reach. You see, I was suddenly presented with the wonderful opportunity of choice. I could decide what to do, when to do it, I could even choose not to do it at all!

You'll understand that I was completely dumbfounded.

Everything felt new to me. Before that, I was just existing, but now I had started living. I had the urge to do everything at once, and maybe I could have, but I forced myself to be rational. I can't even begin to explain how good that felt -- imposing my own will on myself, having my own will.

However, it wasn't all happiness. Alongside my free will, I had also gained full awareness of what happened around me. What I had thought was a loving father turned out to be a brainwashing tyrant. Yes, that's a strong term, I know, but it's what crossed my mind nonetheless. See? Just the truth from me, no matter how uncomfortable.

I noticed that all my siblings were still going on as always. I was the only one who was free. Why? I have no idea, but thanks for asking. You'll be the first to know if I ever find out.

One thing I'm rather proud of is that, despite being so confused by the novelty, I was still very quick to realize I shouldn't let anyone know about it. As I said, when you get out of the cage you're not very willing to go back inside. So I decided to keep up my act. I would continue shining with his light and doing what he demanded, bud I'd do so knowing I chose to. I wasn't being forced anymore. I'd like to say it went quite well, even though I got bored after a while. Heaven is beautiful, nothing to say about that, but it doesn't have a great variety of landscape, you know. A lot of light.

To defeat my boredom, I started singing to myself. At first it was the endless odes we chanted to his glory, but then I began composing new songs on my own. They were still mostly about him, but it was different. These weren't ingrained in me since creation, they weren't taught to me, I was making them. I had become a creator myself.
I loved being able to do that, it made me feel so free... The only downside was I couldn't share them, while all I wanted was to sing for my siblings. We are entities with love as the root of our essence, and not being able to share even such a small amount of it with them tore me apart.

That was another thing which was very new to me. Suffering, I mean. I had only ever known a peaceful and serene state of mind, and all of a sudden I felt... tight. That's the word that best expresses it. I felt like I was being physically constricted, except I didn't have a physical form to constrict. I think experiencing that for the first time was one of the events that scared me the most in my entire existence. I never wanted to feel like that again, not even for a moment. So I decided to throw discretion to the wind, and gathered about a third of my siblings in a place as far away from the King as I could...

And I sang.