War Hero

Enlightenment can be defined many ways and it's many different things to different people. Enlightenment is, also, in the last resort, an opinion. The opinion a brain has about having achieved a blissful, frictionless functionality. Some seekers expect too much from that word. Some seekers may be enlightened, but will never admit it to themselves, nor others. Self-certification is not for them. They need a teacher to pronounce them done.

It's far easier to become a war hero than a spiritual one.

A couple of years back, I went to get a hair cut. I sat next to a very old gent. The barber call me to his chair, and I pointed to the old man and said, "He was here first."

"He is just sitting there. You're next, He comes once or twice a week and sits there for a while. He lives next door in the old folks home. He is a war hero, you know."

On hearing that the old man came to life. "I was a pilot. I shot down five Japanese Zeros." With trembling hand he took out from his shirt pocked a clipped newspaper article. The paper was yellow with age. It's headline read: "Hometown Hero back from the Pacific." It had the picture of a youth that he no longer resembled, in any way. I read it, returned it to him, and patted his shoulder. "Glad to have met you, you are the first Ace I meet."

"Have I showed you my medals?"

"No"

" Well, I'll go next door and get them. Don't leave." He slowly walked away as if stepping on thin ice.

"He won't be back. He'll forget about you, and his medals before he gets there. He has been coming here for three months. He always leaves to get his medals, but I haven't seen the medals, yet."

"Soon he'll forget he was a war hero," I said.

"Either that, or he'll die soon. He is in his eighties, and not healthy at all."

Fame is splendid, like fireworks, but just as brief, and then the hero fights anonymity's gray cloud until he dies.

I never saw the war hero again. He stopped coming to the barbershop. The barber didn't know why. The barber himself died from a stroke last year. He was only fifty five.

All that you need to be a hero is a newspaper clip, that says that you are one. Whose opinion do you need to consider yourself enlightened before your whimpering end catches up with you?