tales for dreamers: startling rewards for the brave

You’d think the brave would be rewarded with something more fulfilling than injury and death. Sadly, no. Not in these parts.

If you ask them, the ones who carved this message into the stone, they’ll say that there’s a clear distinction between bravery and recklessness.

As though it is possible to know beforehand whether an act would be deemed brave or reckless.

Because, truth be told, in this strange world of ours, isn’t it the outcome of your efforts that determines how good or bad your deed was?

If you were to face injury or death, you’d be deemed reckless.

But, in traversing the same route, if you were to emerge victorious, you’d be labeled bold and brave beyond all measure.

Like every adventurer and explorer who has come before you.

Wasn’t their bravery too tinged with a smidgen of recklessness, laced with a drop of madness?

For every human that survived their adventure, countless others died, often in oblivion.

So remember this, dear adventure-seeker. It isn’t always carelessness that causes an expedition to end in disaster. 

Sometimes it is. There’s no denying that. 

But sometimes, it’s also fate. What they call destiny. 

Because even if you keep yourself at a safe distance from the sea, there’s no guarantee that the roads and the people you will soon return to will be any less treacherous. 

Last tale's image info: The fork in the last tale 'up? or down?' posted in end-July before my hiatus in August sits on a path in LaSalle Park in Burlington. Almost always, I choose to go 'up' for views from higher ground and also because that path sticks closer to the lake than the other one does. Both paths eventually intersect.