It

It becomes a terrible process disguised as an impeccable plot. It grows quickly, spreading with insurmountable speed and a force that cannot be matched. You cannot fight it for it embodies you as a person, your thought process, your individuality. It steadily increases its influential presence within, shedding its miniscule identity for a more well known visage, eventually encompassing you as the host that houses this angelically evil entity.

Run and it will follow. Hide and it will seek. Fight and it will defeat. There is no cure, no solution to this problem. It is as if it is a beacon of power within you, whose signal grows stronger and stretches its limbs of persuasion farther and deeper until you can do nothing but accept it. You must, you will. You begin to shape and design everything else to work around it, to feed its growth, to strengthen it and nurse it. Nothing escapes it, and it escapes all. You become a simple projection of what it wants you to be, and you cannot stop yourself from doing as it instructs.

Eventually it partners itself with the ever-dangerous emotion, creating a dynamic duo from hell. It has wits and passion, making it an intelligence in itself, fueled by a purpose, driven by the desires of human emotion. This double-headed monster engulfs any and all other notions that could possibly do it harm; imagine it as a monetary tycoon in the practice of horizontal integration, swallowing those insignificant ideas and morphing them to mirror its own intentions, until nothing is left but itself.

The only flaw in this otherwise decent comparison is that while a tyrant can be killed, this evil I speak of cannot die. Once it is conceived there can be no end to its existence, and yet it is not physically alive. No beating heart, or pulsing brain enables it to live. It functions simply by implanting itself within man, needing nothing more to flourish. There is no force that can silence its appealing cries. It takes hold in the core of passion, sparking flames within a man, and inevitably in those around him, thus ensuring its everlasting existence.

This tricky little thing can be something so simple, so relatively insignificant that there is no telling that it is the single origin from which comes all the events it causes. Like I mentioned earlier, it disguises itself very well, hiding within the depths of the human brain, camouflaged from the rationalities and restraints of the mind in which it rests. And all the while, we serve only as a medium through which this parasite thrives and spreads.

It is undoubtedly the source of all things tragic, inhumane, destructive. The most devastating thing about it, though, is that although it poses this awesome threat, we are forced to use it to attempt to balance those evils, for it is also the source of what we consider brilliant, distinguishing, progressive.

It has us in its unbreakable grip, and will never let go, but its grip is where we are meant to be. We naturally fit the cup of its palm, and we would be nowhere without its nurturing hold. We owe to it our livelihood, our legacy as human beings, and yet fear the possibilities it presents us. We have no choice other than to fuel its existence and keep it present in our lives, and that is okay because most do not even realize they do so every waking, and every unconscious minute of their lives.

It has been, and always will be the distinguishing capability that defines us as the human race.