XXXII - The Darkest Dawn

‘From the moment we stopped being monkeys and became men, with the capability of questioning the meaning of our lives, we felt the sharp urge to find ways to explain why we are here, to make sense out of chaos. Our intelligence is indeed like a double-edged knife, both blessing and curse. On the one hand we are capable of transcending our natural limitations through our enormous capacity to learn and to evolve, and on the other hand, our greatest asset of all, critical thinking, permits us to ask questions that we cannot answer like the meaning of our lives. We are hunted by contradictions, sadistic paradoxes linked to our privileged condition of rational beings. We know that we will die, but we are unable to prevent our deaths. We know that every fact is preceded by a cause, and yet we don’t know what precedes existence. It would seem then, that we are too smart for our own good, and that our ambition is also our blight.

           It is a not hard task then, to imagine the relief or our distant ancestors, hunter-gatherers, cave-men, dressed with clothes made out of the skin of bears and wolves, when they first got a glimpse of the early gods. Gods of thunder, and rain, and fire, and fertility and even death… Sublime beings, transcendental, capable of explaining all the mysteries that eluded men, even death itself, even after-life, capable of attributing meaning to the short, hard lives of those primitive ancestors of ours. Yet here we are now, millennia later, abandoned to our own fate once more. We walk alone into the darkest dawn, enlightened by the lights of the modern era.’

          Leonardo penetrated the night with his words, his friends observing him, listening carefully and yet not entirely sure of what he meant precisely. They are certain however, that those obscure words painted visceral, primitive truths.      

          Romeu’s expression, however, was one of unmistakable shock. Although he admired Leonardo’s unusual thirst for knowledge and enlightenment, so rare amongst most men, especially young ones, he was incapable of refraining from abhorring the friend’s words as blasphemous rants. His upbringing, molded in a traditional Portuguese framework of which religion was a vital component, didn’t allow him anything else, but to be scandalized when someone attacked the dogmas that had been so carefully and indelibly carved into his mind and soul.

          David, who was an atheist himself, listened to his friend in a condition of frank amusement. He hadn’t spend a lot of time in his life worrying too much about the mysteries that Leonardo was now discussing, but listening to the narration of the Death of the Gods, and watching Romeu’s reaction was without doubt something worth watching. He couldn’t understand how Romeu could be so offended, this was the twenty thirst century, who still gave a damn about God and the church after all?

          Alex, out of the three, has always been the one who was more inclined to make an effort to understand their eccentric friend, when he went on one of his existential rants, which tended to be even longer and more passionate when they took place at night and under the influence of alcohol. In this specific case, Leonardo’s words hit him with unusual intensity. He understood, with strange clarity, the tragedy that Leonardo was narrating. He too, in solitude, had cried the Death of the Gods, although he wouldn’t have called it that then. In fact, he had become an atheist long before Leonardo had decided to rebel against religion, so he had had more time to consider the implications of such a decision, and be exposed to its intrinsic hardships. Hence, he knew all too well what Leonardo was talking about. He had experienced the loneliness, the feeling of being alone in the universe, forced to carry on his shoulder the terrible responsibility of finding his personal meaning for life. He too, had endured the terrible pain. He too had felt how the angst of existence burned his insides and corroded his soul.

          ‘Leo,’ he said, ‘what exactly do you mean by the darkest dawn? It seems to me that either you are contradicting yourself or you are referring to a specific contradiction related to what you call “the Death of the Gods”.’

          ‘A contradiction, no doubt, if not consider this. At last, Mankind is prepared to overcome centuries, no, millennia of superstition, and finally rise above the mysticism of the past and pounce into the discovery of wonderful phenomena, which we can now hope to unveil by means of science, and reason and logic. There is no doubt in my mind that such a step forward is absolutely necessary, in humankind’s voyage towards greatness. This is a huge step towards utopian era, enlightened by reason, where we can finally fulfill our potential as a species.

Yet, by parting with the past, and welcoming our tomorrow we will find ourselves in the midst of a morning made of lights as well as shadows, and under the bright sun of knowledge we will shed tears of profound sadness. For the way that lead to truth is covered in thorns and the price to pay four our freedom is certainly high.

 Under the light of truth and freedom, we must walk without the shadows of the god, without their protection and console, without their sweet promises of paradise, without divine ethical mandates, without the things that used to guide our actions and confer meaning to our lives.

Following The Death of the Gods is the Darkest Dawn, and shadows and tears, and godless men and the endless desert of existence. We must walk along those sands, until the end of time, as penitence for our infamous crime, the assassination of our divinities.’

‘Blue pill or red pill, knowledge or happiness,’ completed Alexandre, referencing a favorite film of both of them.’

‘Exactly!’

Like so many times before, the friends carried their conversation well into the night, until the night became dawn. When the first beam of light shed clarity into the city, they had swapped the streets of the Barrio by the comfort of Romeu’s car. The young executive, on the wheel, drove for two, three hours, maybe even longer, as they talked and observed, from inside the vehicle, the quiet, moving streets.

Through the partially tarnished car windows, they saw how the young men and women of Lisbon walked the streets, drunk and cold, in unsteady paces, after a hard night of partying. They walked those streets, ample and narrow, dark, cold, at times dangerous. Stepping on the tiles, made of white stone, that paved the side walks of the whole city. Those streets, hot in the summer, cold in the winter, through which the people of Lisbon passed day after day, on their way to their homes, to a bar, to work, to the movies, to the shopping mall, to the supermarket. All of those people, walking busily towards their destinies, together playing the mundane comedy which is life, making their way from birth to death. All of them walked those streets day after day, thinking trivial things, everyday things, but how many times did they dedicate time to the great mysteries? How many of them, Leonardo wondered, shared his existential doubts?

Driving around the city at night Leonardo and his friends were able to enjoy her in a way that would be impossible during the day or during the early hours of the night. Gone was the rustling and murmuring of the day, and the wild, savage, uncivilized shouts of drunks of Lisbon’s night-life. This was a city asleep, made of deserted streets, and empty horizons. Only a deep sense of calm transpired through the car windows, oozing from the dark avenues, alleys and squares. Here and there they would see some lost ones, prostitutes, petty delinquents or drunkards. However, they would drive past them quickly, and in a blink of an eye they were again immersed on the ghost city, on the silence of the urban dark, on the nocturnal void of the metropolis.

When dawn finally came, it did so, surreptitiously, quietly, gently, slowly. Romeu, Alex and Leonardo were talking still, now sitting in front of the latter’s apartment building. David was already home, he had been the first to be left at home by Romeu. Now was Leonardo who was saying goodbye to his friends, after the long night. ‘See you tomorrow boys,’ he said finally, as he walked towards the building’s entrance, tired and sleepy.

The dawn was yet dark, illuminated only by beams of light so thin, that one would think that the Sun had become shy from one day to the other. The beams would later grow thick however, and they would deliver on their promise eventually, as the great fiery star rise high in the sky, roaring with heat and energy, claiming his throne from the darkness and inaugurated a new day.