This Song is For You

“I do not intend to tip-toe through life, only to arrive safely at death.”

I do not know who first penned this immortal phrase, but it sounds like a passage from one of Ayn Rand’s eloquent hymn’s to the greatness of human potential, glorious calls to arms that exalt the power of mind and body. Calls that fall on deaf ears.

Imagine yourself in a concert hall, listening to a beautiful symphony. Every note composed by the mind of a genius. Every forte, every pianissimo, every crescendo, every decrescendo, paying homage to all that is beautiful in man. Then you look around at the crowd in the hall and see the music fall on deaf ears. Fully functioning ears, but unable (or refusing) to hear the meaning in the music. They have fully functioning ears, but, like animals, cannot listen and understand. You have a sense that you are surrounded not by fellow men, but by walruses, wildebeests, and dogs. You know that they cannot appreciate what you do, and imagine them performing the only task possible to them - baying and barking mindlessly, loudly, with abandon. You cannot hear the music anymore. You find yourself wishing that this concert hall was your living room.

“It does not matter that only a few in each generation will grasp and achieve the full reality of man’s proper stature - and that the rest will betray it. It is those few that move the world and give life its meaning - and it is those few that I have always sought to address. The rest are no concern of mine; it is not me or The Fountainhead that they will betray: it is their own souls.”

So spoke Ayn Rand in the introduction of The Fountainhead.

Ayn Rand is one of the most widely read authors of our time. As such, her works have fallen on many a deaf ear - or many a blind eye, rather. For me to read this address is to hear the orchestra conductor say of the zoo in the audience: They are of no concern of mine. It is to have the symphony’s composer declare: On the road of life, as you sprint past the tip-toeing scaredy cats too afraid to live - and, thus, have already arrived at their intended destination (the coward dies 1,000 deaths, the adage goes) - pay them no heed. They are of no concern of yours. To you, the swift, the runners in the race, the leaders of the pack - this song is for you.

And what a perfect distillation of one of Objectivism‘s great edicts: Men do not share souls. In principle, every man abides in his own living room.