The Good Man

"I want to be the good man", he said.
"I want to be the true man, who did what he ought to have. I see before me the path of the righteous and I wish to take it, though I am no 'religious' man. I wish to walk on it with unshakeable will in the face of overpowering temptation. "
"For someone who just claimed not to be, your words sure point to a religious nature", I told him.
"That lies in your narrow perception, not my fear of the divine", he snapped back.

"I feel like I stand at an abyss, a churning chasm of moral turpitude beckons me. My instinct baulks at such social judgement, for I don't see the black of 'wrong acts' in the deep; I embracingly believe in the grey in life. But that is only part of me. Its the part that would quietly and recklessly take that step forward and plunge in."

The ice clinked in the whisky as he raised it to his lips.

"But there is another part of me. Yes, another part that looks about him before that fateful step. And what does he see? He sees the hesitant minds and bodies that stand beside him. He looks deep into eyes that are overwhelmed with the alluring depths. He knows he will drag them with him- not kicking and screaming, no. Of their own free will, even. Neither they nor he will bother with the clamouring voices in an imaginary world, screaming vile judgement. But he knows what they will find- together and alone, or just together . A murky and fearsome darkness awaits, with tingling nerves to be followed inevitably by....by...".

He turned to me- searching, desperate. I felt a lump in my throat; his helplessness was palpable, his struggle intense.

Then, a sudden and unexpected finality, and an overwhelming sense of defeat. "I wish only to be noble", he grandly sighed.