I have been asked to reflect on my favorite quote from “This was written for you.” I have to say that I did not dwell for long because I even wrote down the quote in my notes while reading the book. "Gods wouldn't necessarily know they were Gods if they have never been anything else." Controversial perhaps, if you happen to be deeply religious. But how rarely we consider things from the perspective of a God?
Consider, if you will, the archetype of the deity—an omniscient being steeped in cosmic significance. Yet, if we strip away the robes of mythology, we find a more fragile truth. Imagine a god who has never known the realm of mortality. How would such an entity perceive itself? Would it float in the ether, blissfully unaware of its own supremacy, lost in the monotony of eternal existence? In the absence of contrast, identity becomes a mere abstraction, a whisper in a windless void.
It is change—the temporal shift from the mundane to the sublime—that affords us the clarity to grasp who we truly are. Reflect upon the human experience: we traverse seasons of joy and sorrow, successes and failures, triumphs and defeats. Each shift reveals a facet of our being that was previously hidden. Only in mourning do we appreciate joy; only in suffering do we discover resilience. All of this supported by another quote in the book; ""Change shines out to all of us and captures our attention, whilst the hardest things to see are those that have always been." Why would Gods be immune to this?
As within the story itself, while we create the imaginary world of the book, are we not every bit as godlike, and yet utterly unaware? Each of us, in our quiet moments, engages in the pretense of omnipotence—master of our own narratives, sculptors of our realities. Yet how often do we remain blind to the richness of our limitations, the depth of our potential? Change, it must be noted, is a harsh teacher, but one that imparts wisdom with unparalleled generosity.
Let us turn our gaze to the cyclical nature of history. The rise and fall of civilizations, the arc of personal destinies—each speaks to the inevitability of change. Perhaps we are all gods in the making, stumbling through our own myths, unaware of the significance of our actions. It is only in the aftermath, in the quiet reflection following upheaval, that we come to see ourselves as we truly are: fallible, fragile, yet infinitely capable.
What, then, of the gods? If we are to believe that they possess knowledge beyond our ken, we must also entertain the possibility that they, too, are caught in the web of existence. Perhaps they, too, are unaware of their divinity until faced with the stark contrast of something else. After all, who are we to claim omniscience when even the most exalted among us might be in the throes of a divine identity crisis?
As I ponder these quotes, for so long forgotten in a humble journal within the confines of a hidden safe, they become poignant reminders of the necessity of change. It is through our trials, our tribulations, and our joys that we come to define ourselves and our place in the universe. To live fully is to embrace the paradox of our existence: that we are both creators and creatures, gods and mortals, eternally evolving in the face of life’s relentless march.
Thus, let us not shy away from the tumult of transformation. Instead, let us greet it as an old friend—one that reveals the very essence of who we are and what we might yet become. In the end, it is only through the crucible of change that we may grasp the weight of our own divinity, however fleeting, and perhaps, just perhaps, come to know the gods we aspire to be.
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