14 Ramadhan, 1445
Gai Eaton provides a particularly incisive account of the life of The Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him) and his early successors in Islam and the Destiny of Man. Reading it served as a poignant reminder of the impossibly large footsteps we seek to follow in. Of course, such emulation is essentially beyond us, but that doesn't make the attempt to follow misguided. Quite the opposite, I think.
But another description of a kind of ideal from Eaton's tome powerfully resonated with me. This is his account of The hero of pre-Islamic Arab poetry who was always the Bedouin 'knight', standing upright, true to himself, in a world reduced, as it were, to the bare bones of sun, sky, sand and rock, proud even in poverty and seeking joy in self-mastery, scornful of security and all the ambiguities of wealth, and ready to look death in the face without flinching. Gosh, isn't that fine!
It put me in mind of the fallen Samurai who feature in some of Kurosawa's great movies. I'm not sure that I actually aspire to what this represents, except possibly in a mock-heroic Bloomian fashion. But at some deep level - possibly a childish one - I know I'm stirred.
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