Dalinar

“But sometimes a hypocrite is nothing more than a person who is in the process of changing.”

-          Dalinar Kholin, Oathbringer (Stormlight Archive #3) by Brandon Sanderson

Imagine if you will, the scene of the Robert Frost poem The Road Not Taken. Two roads, diverging in a yellow wood. Now imagine a signpost pointing towards the road less travelled, saying “Take this road, ya morons.” And imagine that the other road is well paved and lined with lush grass, wish shops and stops and the promise of beautiful sights along the way. And the person that just finished putting up the sign picks up his toolkit and walks away – along the road more travelled.

What do you do, as a young seventeen or eighteen year old, unexposed to the world, shoulders heavy with the weight of your own insecurities?

This was how it felt, to be a student in my former university. Now, I am a literal person. If a signboard tells me to go one way, I go that way. I pay little attention to what other people are doing, not out of a desire to be a hipster, but usually because I’m too self-absorbed to notice. But every time someone would ask me why I took the road less travelled, I would point to the sign, and they would shake their head at my foolishness and say, “That’s not what smart people do. You’re not supposed to listen to the sign.”

I fought them. I argued with them. And I watched helplessly as one by one, they all took the road more travelled by. To be frank, the road I’d chosen was starting to get a little lonely.

But then, a change in the wind. Perhaps the signboard was turned around. Perhaps the lush grass on the other road died away, or perhaps the paved road cracked their feet and grew red with the blood they spilled. Perhaps the further they walked, the more they realized it was an illusion. Both roads were garbage, but vultures awaited you on the road more travelled by, relying on their beautiful bait to draw you in. Slowly, ever so slowly, they returned, and more of them appeared along the road I walked.

And I gaped. “Did I not tell you?” I asked, but none paid much heed. They were busy congratulating themselves on finding this road, busy declaring themselves the kings of the road. Was it a trick of the light, or did some of them appear to have beaks and twisted, crooked necks now? The road less travelled, it would seem, now had its own vultures.

I recently finished reading Oathbringer, the third book in Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive series. One of the protagonists is at the tail end of a very long journey of redemption. As a reader, I root for him and admire his strength. But I also wonder what the people whose lives he destroyed along the way would say, were they to see him now as Honor’s Champion. Would they hail him as a hero? Would they still hate him for what he did to them? Would even his own children forgive him?

“The most important step a man can take. It’s not the first one, is it? It’s the next one.

Always the next step.”

-          Oathbringer, Brandon Sanderson

A hypocrite is sometimes a person in the process of changing, he says. But how will we tell the difference? Cowards will all too often don any skin that fits, any skin that keeps them from having to confront the ugliness of their own nature. Must we, then, give the benefit of the doubt to all that speak of change?

No. Let them prove it with their actions as with their words. Let them face every last act of hurt and betrayal they have committed, and accept the consequences, be they what they are. Let them redeem themselves with every breath they take, and with their whole lives. And at the end of a man’s life, let it be decided whether he has walked the right road after all.

“If I pretend I didn’t do those things, it means that I can’t have grown to become someone else. Journey before destination. It cannot be a journey if it doesn’t have a beginning. I will take responsibility for what I have done. If I must fall, I will rise each time a better man.”

-          Dalinar Kholin, Oathbringer