I see a bucket.
Every person carries a bucket like this one. Visible only to those whose eyes have been opened. Into this bucket trickles the waters that fuel their psyche. Happiness, joy, confidence, success. All of the positive aspects of one’s life, they all are drips of water within the bucket.
Slowly, over time, one’s bucket fills up. The fuller it gets, the more success one finds.
But life isn’t all rose-petals. Most Arcadians understand that to their core. As much as the bucket fills up, negative experiences… failure, loss, frustration, they draw from that bucket. When the water is gone, all that fuels us is our own negativity.
That begs the question, Jackson Cade… Who do you want to be?
In your life, you tried to fill your bucket with all the best things the APD could offer. You studied the evidence, solved cases and truly made a positive difference in Arcadia.
Until you met a man by the name of Jasper Redgrave.
Drip, drip.
It was he who began drawing from your bucket. Slowly but surely, what water you had accumulated became but a trickle.
You were demoted, ejected from Eagle Unit. Redgrave had taken from you everything you hold dear and left you dry. You were broken, with an empty bucket. So you found ways to fill it with whatever you could find.
A search for a brother you thought dead. A vendetta against the one responsible for the Red District bombing.
You searched, and continue to search, but are helpless to truly find any answers. You laid claim to the World Championship, but even that too became nothing more than another drip in your bucket of loss.
Each loss you have taken has drawn from that bucket. You’re running on empty, Cade. Good men make bad decisions when there’s no water left in their buckets.
How full is your bucket, officer?
Knowing that you may never find the answers you seek. That you may never see your brother alive again?
For on Deathrow, what goes there… dies there.
I’ve seen first hand the death and destruction that place leaves behind. For Deathrow is not a place designed to let people live.
That loss inside you has got to be mounting up like a torrent, ready to burst forth from that bucket.
I too, know of loss. I feel it in every breath I take.
But I found my hope. I found freedom, granted to me by the Third Eye. CJ may not be so lucky. You carry all that weight inside your bucket.
This week, anything goes.
You can take all of that loss, all of that hate and empty it inside that ring. But it will be nothing but a splash in my bucket.
You see, Jackson, we all have a bucket. Myself included.
Only, I have learnt to fill mine with things that help to sustain me. Hope. Faith. Every vision granted to me by the Third Eye.
My bucket never runs empty, because my eyes are open to it. If you only look, you will see just how empty your bucket is.