The Ouroborous

It was unclear whether the man was forced into the labyrinth, but the man always seemed to      return to the eternal maze

He told himself it was out of necessity, a necessity for who or what, he couldn’t tell you

But he finds himself blank-faced and armed marching into its serpentine halls to fight endless dangers 

He spends hours preserving himself from constant blows and running from something invisible

As he struggles, a voice from behind him whispers:

“You are the ouroboros, young man.

You come every day, eating your strength away for survival, against something you have yet to see with your own eyes, 

You come mindlessly to sacrifice too much.

A butterfly that lays its eggs in a bird's nest shall have no young.”

The man spins, searching for the voice, his face meeting the sun's gleam. 

Trying to absorb its warmth in a break from the chaos, he replies:

“As the sun sets, my work will cease, 

The stars will radiate a delicate light, and the moon will illuminate the landscape With half a rotation, the sun begins to rekindle its warmth and reclaim its space in the sky

It fades the navy midnight into a bright blue, with streaks of purple and orange.

The sun slowly thaws the once-darkened land

And itself into a brilliant swirl of orange and yellow, its explosive strength and luminosity unchallenged.

His return is always awaited, praised, and unwavering.

You, the voice I cannot see, are wrong.

The Ouroboros is the sun, which provides eternal nourishment”

The earth stills, the brilliant warmth in the sky dims upon the man’s face, and the voice replies:

“I am not the Ouroboros, I may hold eternal nourishment, but I do not eat myself away to survive

I live with purpose, not necessity without thought.

You, young man, are merely a Sisyphus, while I carry the weight of the world child.

You are supposed to live in it”

The young man in turn drops his sword and looks at the place where it landed. 

For the first time since he entered the maze, he notices the tall green grass

     The first thing that came to mind when hearing the theme was cycles was how people live most of their lives to

fulfill expectations and societal pressures. For instance, school. All students understand the importance of school,

and yet students need help with the constant homework and classes that they need to catch up on what the

overarching goal of their work is. The young man who is stuck in the labyrinth faces the same questions and does

not process them because he views his work as necessary, even though he does not protect anyone in the process

of going out of the way to harm himself. The unnamed thing he is fighting symbolizes people's internal struggles in

real life. People are always fighting a battle, most of them being wastes of energy with no real success. The voice

that the man hears is meant to break the man’s daily cycle of returning to the maze, which proves to be successful.

At the end the young man sees grass, something he never seemed to recognize inside the maze despite going

there for years. This is meant to show his altered perspective and his recognition of the loop he was stuck in. The

metaphor of the Ouroboros is to express the different mindsets that the voice and the man hold. The man views the

Ouroboros as something that eternally feeds itself, believing himself to fulfill that, while the truth is that he is stuck

in an infinite cycle of mindlessly eating himself to survive. Many people face similar situations and need to take the

same action as the man, dropping the things that weigh them down to see the world they have been missing.