The Parable of the Oil Executive atop Kilimanjaro

One day while teaching, Josh was asked, ”Teacher, is a secret a secret if it isn’t secret?”

Josh spoke thus:

An oil executive was standing at the top of Mount Kilimanjaro, weeping.

“All my life,” the oil executive said, “All my life I’ve wanted to come to Africa.  All my life I’ve wanted to come to Mount Kilimanjaro.  All my life I’ve dreamed of climbing Mount Kilimanjaro.”

“And now you are here,” the oil executive’s guide said.

“As a youth,” the oil executive said, “I read The Snows of Kilimanjaro.  As a youth I read Green Hills of Africa.  I read Hemingway, and I wept.”

“And now you are here,” the oil executive’s guide said.

“It was not for the stories of hunting I wept,” the oil executive said, “It was not for the regal lions that I wept.  It was not for the enormous elephants I wept.  I didn’t weep for the zebra, clownish in its stripes, or for the giraffe, impossibly graceful and impossibly tall.  The ferocity of the rhino didn’t make me weep.  The slyness of the crocodile didn’t make me weep.  The subtle, submerged power of the hippopotamus didn’t make me weep.  Not even the leopard, so shy and so deadly, made me weep.”

“And still they are here,” the oil executive’s guide said.

“The harsh tan grasses of the Serengeti summoned no tears,” the oil executive said, “The spiny Acacias, slender and defiant, left my eyes as dry as the savanna sky.  No emotions flowed at the sight of a ruddy river, of a salt lake pink as sunset in its blanket of flamingos, of a fallen wildebeest open at the gut, dinner for jackals, hyenas and buzzards.  These summoned no overwhelming feelings.”

“And you have been among them coming here,” the oil executive’s guide said.

“I have seen the harpy eagle, the secretary bird, the bower bird and the kingfisher,” the oil executive said, “And never wept.  I have seen the termite, the ant, the scorpion and the dung beetle and merely cringed or laughed.”

“And they have remained at your feet,” the oil executive’s guide said.

“But nothing made me weep until this,” the oil executive said.

“Why do you weep now?” the oil executive’s guide asked.

“This,” the oil executive said, indicating the mountain top, “The glaciers, the snows of Kilimanjaro.  I have waited all my life to be among the snows at the peak of Kilimanjaro, here to stand upon the glaciers of Kilimanjaro.”

“And yet they are not here,” the oil executive’s guide said.

“They are gone,” the oil executive said, “Just as I knew they would be.  Just as science said they would be.  And still I hoped they would not be.”

“They are gone,” the oil executive’s guide said.

“They are gone,” the oil executive said, weeping.