Don’t fly too close to the sun.

My mother always had to warn me of that. I was always the dreamer chasing the stars and if not wrangled in, she thought I was sure to be burned.

I’ve admittedly been lucky, I literally climbed as high as I could and held on to that golden sun.

Most aren’t so fortunate.

Consider Icarus, the man intertwined with my mother’s warning.

His father constructed wings out of wax and feathers and used them to escape their cliffside prison.

He gave the same parental warning mother dearest did, do not get too close to the sun. His warning was much more literal as the heat from the sun could melt the wax and his father’s brilliant contraption would all fall apart leading to Icarus’ demise.

Icarus and I share that rebellious streak, that streak that tells you I know what’s better for me than anyone else. It’s a mentality built by the bricks of passion without the concrete of experience. Without experience and planning, most fail.

Icarus ignored his father’s warning and his father could not stop him without putting himself in danger. He soared as high as those wings would take him and did not know he was in danger until too late. The feathers fell and Icarus with them. Chasing the sun led to drowning in the ocean and ending up where all do, underground in the abyss of Hades.

Now we have a whole team of hounds trying to do the exact same thing. They don’t see Arcadia the way I do, a place where you can climb up from the lowest of lows and reach the highest of highs. They dont see it as a place to preserve, they see it as a place to escape. They saw the bright light of the outside world and now they’re trying to chase the sun.

Seek the sun and you shall be destroyed by its light.

You’ve climbed every level of Arcadia all the way to Olympus, some of you have grasped the top prize as I have and yet, it’s never enough.

You see that light and assume that its ultimately better because its higher, ultimately assume the grass is greener on the other side. Grass is greener where its watered. Hope and light without proper planning just leaves to a torched lawn where the grass is as dead as your dreams.

Seek and ye shall find…

You’ll find the sun and crumble under the light none of you are used to. You’ll go blind the moment that intense blaze hits your corneas. You’ll beg for the life you used to have here. Chase the sun from this realm and you’ll only introduce yourself to darkness.

Like a parent with a child, we are not trying to punish you, we are trying to protect you.

We’re not just trying to preserve Arcadia, we’re trying to preserve your well-being.

Yet, I can only prevent you from self-destruction so long.

When your world is darker than the lowest levels here, I’ll ask was it better to burn out than fade away?