Lara documents/Lara 005.003
Translated by J.D. Barnes
As she got older, my mother's sister[1] would watch the children in her neighborhood play. Their games always made her happy and made the pains of age seem lighter. She would tell me "Yahvo loves the innocence of a child." And so did she.
Before she died, I would come and sit with her after my daily duties were closed. I wanted to see this which Yahvo, and she, loved so dearly. A sense of wonder grew in me. In them, I could see the stirrings of those things which are most noble in D'ni—here were flashes of compassion, empathy, honor, and nobility. They shared what they had, listened to each other's stories. When it came time to pretend, they did not contradict each other. Rather, they accepted what their fellows had said and built off of it until they'd developed a grand tapestry of story. I wondered when we, as grown D'ni, had lost such admirable innocence.
One day, there was a quite a gathering of children in an usually unused storage place. I followed them, curious to see what the game was. They'd found a nest of infant vermin[2] and then they'd set up a cistern of water. Their game was to drop one of the infants into the center of the cistern, and see how long it could survive. There were around six corpses floating in the water by the time I arrived. When I scolded them harshly to the twenty-five, the professed that they had no idea why I was angry.
These children did not know that their game was cruel. They did not know they were extinguishing life in the name of their own entertainment. They were innocent of such things. And that was when I learned that the innocence of a child is not always admirable.
These children did not know what is right and what is wrong, and as such they were capable of surprising amounts of virtue. And for that same reason, they were capable of surprising sadism[3]. Innocence is a state of darkness, in which one has no understanding of the Yahvo's creation. And one cannot be choose a right path when one cannot see it.
True virtue is not that which is accidental. If I stumble in the dark and push a fellow D'ni out of danger, I have not been brave, nor kind, nor selfless. I have been the tool of another's good fortune. I am brave when I choose to defy fear. I am kind when I choose to defy cruelty. I am selfless when I choose to defy greed. Without that choice behind my action, I am not virtuous, but an unseeing mechanism in the passage of time and cause. And I cannot choose, and thus be virtuous, without knowledge and the ability to discern.
We look at the child and envy them, for they seem to act so easily and perform virtuous tasks without the poison of bitter age. But these children do not act out of virtue, but rather without the constraint of bitterness. That is what we can learn from our children. But it is up to the grown to create virtue through the tool that is knowledge, and not constrain ourselves by that poison which is bitterness. And that is truly what Yahvo loves.
Footnotes[edit]
- ↑ The wording here is literally "the sister of my mother", not any term like "aunt". It’s unknown whether D’ni has a term for that sort of familial relationship. –J.D.
- ↑ The exact name of the animal wasn't used. –J.D.
- ↑ Literally "pleasure-from-agony". I felt sadism was an appropriate translation. –J.D.
