I would like to take one step! Just one single step! Just one small step! How good it feels just thinking about it! The thought of this one small step!
And there they all stand – uninvited, be added. And they look. They look at me eagerly. And they say to each other: „Now he goes! Oh, he is going! How gladly I would go too! A thousand steps I would go! And not one less.“ And there they stand, and they stare at me. Eagerly. Eagerly, of the spectacle that is offered to them. Their thousand steps before their eyes… their unstepped…. How could I now take my one single, oh so small step? How could I disappoint them – the uninvited? How could I deceive them, betray them and deprive them of their thousand steps? Their thousand steps. The steps that I have to walk for them. Because I walk and they stand.
And I take the first step. And it feels so comfortable there. It feels so right there. It feels the most delicious security there. The sense, it rests in that place! And they stare at me. Nervously they step from one foot to the other. Sweat stands on their foreheads and displeasure already shows on some faces. On some also a touch of scorn. And they begin to whisper: „Now he’s leaving! He will go on, won’t he? Now he goes nevertheless and does not stop surely after one step already again? How could he get anywhere like that? How should he arrive somewhere like that? There he could have remained also equal! It will not remain with only one ridiculous step? That would be failure! Failure would be that! Go and then make only one step! All hot air. Why does he steal our time with such foolishness? Oh, would we go, so far would we go! Into the distance we would go! We would bathe our senses in all that is to be experienced out there! And he lets us dream and then does not go the way for us! He crushes our dazzling bubble and plunges us into the deep pain.“ – The deep pain of rigidity. The rigidity that the child of fear.
And I tear myself away from my holy place. And I drag myself – under their abysmal collective breathing, which sounds as if all air suddenly escaped from a huge balloon – nine hundred and ninety-nine steps further. And I stand in the distance. And I stand in the wasteland. And I stand in solitude in all the newness my five senses experience. And I turn around and the hot wind has already blown away the traces of my steps. And I look back and silently tears flow down my dusty cheeks. Now I’ll never find my way back. Back to the place of my one small step…. to the place of salvation and security….
And they, they sleep and dream their dream of salvation in the far distance. And sleep… and stand…
– – and if they should ever go, then never under a thousand steps. Because where else would you get there?