I have traveled with the cave man as he moved constantly in search of shelter and hunted the massive dinosaurs to feed his clan.  I laid with him under the stars and looked up with him as his mind tried to understand his world.

I have voyaged with the Vikings, setting out onto the waters into the unknown.   Leaving home and hearth, fearlessly sailing forth to discover and learn about their world.  Testing the boundaries and finding new lands.

I followed silently as man has gone to every corner of this planet.   The fierce warring tribes that fought to protect their piece of the world.   Others came to conquer and destroy whole societies in their quest to make the world theirs.

I was there when men learned to pray, trusting that their world would be safe through their beliefs that a divine being would protect them.  That their faith would give them  protection as they went into battles.  The armies both praying, some to different gods, sometimes to the same one.

I followed man into "civilization" and watched him use his brain to make work simpler.  He expanded his world and made it easier to know his fellow man.  Watched as he took each new invention and built on to it, making his world stretch further.

I have stood at the top of every structure man has made, each reaching higher into the heavens.  I have seen the plagues and destruction, the disease and illness.  I stood by holding man's hand in their last painful hours as they clung to this world.

Mine is a weary soul, I have though the ages brought my knowledge and skills with me.  Trying every avenue to make this world a better place to be.    Feeling no one has listened to me.   Seeing the successes and the failures mount into piles. 

On one side is the growth that has taken place in the world, and on the other side is the failures too huge to tally.  I see man continuing to try to conquer the world and each other, and have seen the destruction of the planet.  The world continues revolving silently rebelling boiling inside.

This soul sees the end of man, a time when they will no longer be welcome on this world.  The waters will not quench their thirst, the soil will not grow their plants and the air will poison their lungs.

What is then left of man will be only the scars they made on this planet.   Once more this soul will travel wearily on looking back at the attempt of man to know his world, and his futile attempt to conquer it.

This soul so wise with knowledge and saddened by the inability to change what could have been, will journey on.  Other old souls will float by and we will nod a head and know what the other feels, that what was once a beautiful world now lays in waste.

My old soul speaks to you now, hear me please.  I ask you once more to listen and see what I have seen.  Look through my eyes and learn from me the knowledge of centuries.  The world is not man's to conquer nor the people on its shore to be made subservient to another.

I see the pain the world has be subjected to and it will cease to respond with the nourishment it has always provided man.  Change the ending of this story for this old weary soul.  Show me man has learned to live together and that he will now show his world the care it needs to survive.

My soul speaks for the world.  It speaks to every man, woman and child.  It does not see colors, and cares not the race.  I speak in every language and to those of all faiths, and beliefs.  This soul saw the world since the dawn of time and shares this vision in order that you alter the path of man and save your world.

                               Cheryl C. Helynck

                                        1998