All may fail, but you shall stand

You will never see truth. It is beyond you, it is beyond me, it is beyond anyone we call Human. Truth is a strange mistress, who stands behind a veil, ever beckoning, whose form we can see in how she presses herself into the sheets of our instruments and models, but whose face you will never know. Mysteries will die in the eyes of those who saw them only once. History will forget beautiful secrets, and already we have forgotten the faces of men and women who knew truths we will never know, and who perhaps held points of data that unlocked doors now closed to us forever. You will lose to Entropy. Heat death will come, and all systems, natural and biological, will flatline into equilibrium. Everything you have worked for will falter, fall, fail, and rot. Most tragic of all, you will never become who you could have been. Mistakes will add up. Stumbling blocks set before you by others will slow your progress. Your trajectory will need constant readjustment upwards, until you run out of fuel. You will die having failed to run your race as hard as you could have.

And yet, you will wake every morning and you will fight on. Why? Because you have a mission, little Aspirist. You are set on a path. It is the path walked by warriors that stand in front of overwhelming odds, because behind them a family trusts in them. It is the path of the shepherd boy who stares down the wolf twice his size because his sheep trust him. It is the path of the mother who makes bread out of the last of her meal and oil because her children trust in her. It is the path of the general that arranges defenses he knows will fail. It is the path of the farmer that puts his boots on in the morning after a hailstorm. It is the path of tender hands spreading the seeds of endangered plants. It is the path of kind eyes covered in the soot of bombs. It is the path of boots marching into hell to defend the innocent. And it is your path. The path you walk, in the face of overwhelming odds. This is the path that calls you to follow aspirion.

Others may weep for what will come. Others may look at the math and conclude their efforts do not matter. Others may turn to the bottle or the pill to escape the reality of what will come. Others may choose to serve Evil, for in it they see gain. Others may choose to sit in their neutrality, and indirectly serve evil. But not you. You have felt the call of The Paths. You have heard the horns of the Aspirills. And you have come to answer the summoning call of trumpet and drum!

Stand, little one. And know this; Though you may stand to fall, you will never stand alone.