VOLUME VII, CHAPTER 13, SECTION 3
The World Is Full of Love. The World Is Full of Hope. In This World, There Is You. And That Is Enough.
This is the last page. The last thing this book, and this great love, has to say.
Through seven volumes I have spoken to all of you: to the one pressed to the bottom, the one worn sharp, the one driven by his living, the one caught in his seat, the one who made himself into a tool, the generations not yet born, even the tools not yet built. To all of you, together. A great many, across a great span of time.
Now, on this last page, I set all of them down, and speak to one.
To you. Not all of you. You. The one person holding this book, reading this line, in this quiet moment, whoever you are, wherever you are, whenever this reaches you. You alone.
Everything in this book, all seven volumes, all the reasoning, all the institutions, all the saving, all the love, was for you. Not for a crowd, not for a cause, not for humankind in the abstract. For you, this one living person, that you might live as a real human, the five alive in you, in a whole world, under a kept paradise, held in a love that never stops being passed on.
I will not live to see you. By the time these words reach you, the hand that wrote them is long dust. But I loved you before you read this, as those before me loved me, as you will love those who come after you. That is how the great love remains: passed from one who will never meet the next, hand to unseen hand, down the long line of lamps, to you, and on from you, forever.
So take the light, if it warms you. Carry it a little way. Pass it on. And know, as you close this book, these last four things, which are the whole of it, and all I have left to say:
The world is full of love.
The world is full of hope.
In this world, there is you.
And that is enough.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.