A Place Worth Being

I.  A Place Outgrown

A ship on the ocean had plotted its course. Its destination: a Place worth being.
It had measured the distance, used the most modern maps to help navigate
and even accounted for delays, like encounters with pirates or worse, seductive sirens.

This ship was staffed with the best mates the oceans had ever seen. You see that was the problem,
they were the best. They had seen it all.
They conquered every shore they set eyes on,
plucked from it whatever resources they fancied:
gold that looked like glittering fruits,
animals who names they couldn't pronounce,
people,
oh, the beautiful people-
colorful people they had, seen, and taken (if you catch my drift blowing north by north west...).
Yes, they had some fun
and had their fill of the cornucopia of exotic adventures.

But the thrill of plunder had a strange after-taste. Some said it was reminiscent of emptiness, apathy, and regret, or a combination of the three.
After a long night of plundering, sailors were know to be
puking out self- loathing
off the sides of the deck
and inhaling longing for enthusiasm the next morning.
Captains complained that their crew was falling apart like the wood of a dead and rotting tree. The issue was these places they had been were always fleeting, never feeling very real or substantial. They never felt to actually be in a Place worthy of being.

So, the admiral decided that he would solve this issue by gathering up those willing men and women to explore uncharted territory. The concept seemed simple initially, as they sailed away from their fleet...

II. A Place Unknown

A few weeks after they embarked on this journey,
something strange started to happen.

These able-bodied men and women,
who had seen creatures from the pits of hell's oceans dangling fairies on strings seducing some into caverns of jagged teeth,
who had fought off men disguised as fish twice their size and were three times as smelly,
who had seen friends vanish into whirlpools and ocean twisters, making their flesh and bone-bodies coil up like knotted rope,
these people
began to get
nervous.

This nerve was unusual because, it wasn't a fear of anything on these uncharted waters, no,
this was different because the nerve came from
within.
An incurable nervousness that had them acting strangely. Even towards one another.

It wasn't that they didn't know where they were going, but rather
it was that part of them knew that they wouldn't come back with the same stuff. The same
inside stuff, that is.
Because anyone who decides to search for a Place worth being has already drank the been infected with the ideas of change.
And whatever metamorphosis ensued, they would not be prepared for that battle.

The crew began to question everything. Some argued that they should just abandon all the tools and compasses which weren't helping. They wanted to learn to trust their sense of direction because no one knew exactly where there destination was, anyways.
Some began reading the maps like scripture. They even looked at out-dated ones and tried to navigate their course accordingly, believing this was the "One True Way."
Others gave up all hope and either jumped off the ship shouting "None of this is real!" or wrote down their ramblings of how nothing mattered and life was just a cycle perpetual chaos.

The crew was in shambles. Their captain, Three Eyed Willie was sobbing uncontrollably. His best mates who were also his brothers had declared mutiny and attempted leading a revolution. Willie tried to convince them to stop, negotiate, or come to some sort of truce to keep the ship's crew together,
but they would not comply.
 They were convinced that they had found the "Right Answer." Any other beliefs, like the "One True Way" were fundamentally different from their "Right Answer," and therefore needed to be eliminated.


III. A Place Worth Being

Maps and books were burned. Some people were about to be thrown overboard when this almost war almost burst open onto deck, but a voice (but no one remembers whose) shouted, "Land!"
Everyone paused and looked off silently for a moment.

They were approaching land.
People decided to put their differences aside and
opened the sails,
grabbed the wheel and worked together to
move full speed toward this unknown land.

Inside no one was ruminating over what had just happened, only that they regretted it. It was a foolish, dark and desperate side of themselves they did not want to revisit.
Instead, their hearts were pounding, feeling themselves approaching something big. 
 
When they reached the shores, things seemed to be normal. Sandy beaches,
some trees,
rocks, but
where were the  people?

They sent out some men and women to explore while others made camp on the beach. It was nightfall when they returned with some friends. In the shadows these friends looked to be about half the size of a grown adult, naked and holding hands.
As they approached the crew could see more clearly that these people were children. They came in giggling but the crew's faces were much more serious.

Willie stared in disbelief. He saw with all his three eyes, a three eyed child the spitting image of himself. In fact all these children appeared to be carbon copies of the crew. One by one the children came from the trees as each crew member stood with gaped mouth.

"Were are we?" Someone finally spoke.
The children looked up smiling,
"You've finally found yourselves. I would call that a Place worth being."