Icarus's Fearless Climb to Freedom

Icarus: Let’s fly! Higher and higher! The gods are surely calling me towards the sun! At least then… I’ll know freedom.

Daedalus: No Icarus! ‘Tis far too dangerous! The wax on your wings will melt, and you will surely descend to the earth! No man has ever touched the sun! Stop this foolishness now!

Icarus: No man has ever touched the sun? Then I’ll be the first! Watch me!

Daedalus: You wish to throw away the freedom you so sought?

Icarus: No, you wish to throw away your freedom! Should I fail to touch the sun, and yet descend to the depths, I would have ascended higher than any man has ever known! Should you return safely home and see another day, you will be subject to the toils of King Minos for yet many more years! Have you no shame in your past life, and what lies ahead? At my first breath of the wonders of the world, you wish for me to lower my head? Should I live another day, what then?

Daedalus wept and wept, but to no avail.

As Icarus was soaring closer and closer to the sun, he looked about –– the sight of which no man had ever seen before.

Breathtaking.

Icarus laugh and laughed… until he laughed his last laugh and plunged to the depths...

But if you have never learned how to use life, if life is useless to you, what does it matter if you have lost it? What do you still want it for?

Whether you have lived enough depends not on a count of years but on your will. -Michel de Montaigne

“Never regret thy fall,
O Icarus of the fearless flight
For the greatest tragedy of them all
Is never to feel the burning light.” -Oscar Wilde