A young man rode his bicycle down a forgotten trail through the hills of Pennsylvania. The brilliant spring sun warmed him like a conscious caress. The leaves and trees and rocks called to him of the hope and promise of life on this earth. Alone in the wilderness, he felt the fresh wonder of an untouched world, where joy and reason and meaning were not only possible but a simple human birthright.
Some wondrous music of exaltation played in his head, the self-contained joy of endless variations on a theme spun out by the laughing creative force of an inexhaustible imagination. Yet in his life so far he had found precious few words or deeds or thoughts among the acts of men that could match the meaning of that music. Not the work of man as a degradation of nature, but as an organic creation that improves upon given materials by fulfilling the potential of the earth. Not masters and slaves, but a free and independent life of mutual respect and voluntary interaction, without pain or fear or guilt. Not happiness and achievement served to him by others, but the simple sight of joy and reason and meaning made real, which would inspire in him the courage to create his own happiness and achievement.
He could give no name to the thing he sought.
He yearned for an exalted experience of life — but he was told that exaltation was reserved for things not of this earth.
He wanted human activity to be a higher step, something noble that he could respect, even something sacred that he could worship — but he was told that the only fit object of worship was above and beyond the sphere of human activity.
He longed to witness a spark of the divine in his fellow man, and to nurture that spark in himself — but he was told that to aspire to a share in the divine was the height of arrogance.
He hoped to find a way of living that would be animated by a natural reverence for man and this earth — but he was told that the only path to spirituality lay in turning away from this life toward a supposed life after death.
He wished for some sign of what he sought, some guidepost on the road to joy and reason and meaning — but what he sought seemed perpetually just beyond his grasp.
The boy pedalled on through the quiet hills, revelling in the solitude and wondering about his future. On the trail ahead he saw a blue hole of open sky where the ridge ended and a valley began. He closed his eyes for a moment, suspending his sense of reality in the strange hope that at the top of the ridge he would find unobstructed sky above and below him. But when he reached the edge he opened his eyes to the most wondrous creation he had ever seen — a valley dotted with small homes that honored the earth and improved upon it by growing naturally out of the ground, completing the unplanned beauty of the hills with an even greater beauty of human achievement and fulfillment.
Only after a long while did he notice a man sitting nearby — the man who had made this place real by designing the homes in the valley. Little did the man know that he had given the boy something beyond mere stone and glass: the courage to face a lifetime.
~
I was the boy on the bicycle.
Perhaps you were, too. Perhaps you, too, rode your bicycle down a forgotton trail through the hills of Pennsylvania (or its equivalent), wondering if you would find joy and reason and meaning in life. Perhaps you, too, sought out the solitude of your own company, treasuring each quiet hour of reflection in a noisy world, breathing in the irreplaceable singularity of your own personhood like great gulps of free fresh air, hungering for all the outstretched possibilities of what you might become — yet daunted by the enormity of the gap between your present and your future, and therefore seeking signposts on the road to the kind of life and character you could in the end look back upon with the pride and honor of a job well done.
Perhaps in your seeking along that lonely path you came upon a novel called The Fountainhead. For a few days or weeks or months, it changed everything. You read the book again, perhaps a few times — challenged in your thinking, stirred in your emotions, deflected onto a new course, imbued with a burning sense of purpose, transported by a comprehensive vision of life as it might be and ought to be.
Perhaps, after the blinding flash of your first encounter with The Fountainhead had mellowed to a warm glow of enhanced awareness, new questions and challenges arose. Is this vision real? Can it be achieved in a world where joy and reason and meaning seem all too rare and elusive? Can I integrate these insights into my own life without submerging my individuality under a flood of ideas and abstractions that, however compelling, were made by someone else?
I, too, have asked these questions and faced these challenges. After more than thirty years of reflecting on The Fountainhead, I think that I have finally gained some hard-won wisdom regarding the search for joy and reason and meaning in life. I have tried my best to distill that wisdom into this book. Only you can decide if I have succeeded.
Next: Joy