Every journey starts with that first placement of the foot along the path you will take. Yes, with modern conveniences such as planes, trains, and automobiles, we find ourselves walking far less, and travelling far more in our daily mundane lives…

…but I refer to the continual path which started many years ago, and stretches many years ahead - that Road we call "Life".

I am not here to talk about the start of this journey, when we were just brought into this world, took our first breath, our first step. I am not here to do more than touch on the basic ideals that were given to us as we grew and matured, still learning what it meant to be a human being, become an adult in our society. Everyone had different influences, good and bad, which has brought them to the path we now share in one form or another.

As many in our community refer to it; the Viktel Aria.

We started along this at different places, in different times in our life. Some of us perhaps didn't realize what this road actually was, until we met someone by chance, who happened along at just such a time, and they told us. The realization may have been slow to set in, like the warmth of a fire after a long day in a cold winter...or it might have hit us like the lighting of a match.

There is still the road ahead, though. Not everyone is as far as everyone else. Those of us who are just starting, look for signs that the others who have come before may have left, so that we might learn more, and be able to travel farther down this road. For it isn't an easy road; nor are the signs left for us to learn from easy to understand at times...sometimes, it is quite difficult to understand what someone speaks of, until we come to the point, later down the road, where it suddenly falls into place, like the last piece of a puzzle.

The journey is long, and hard. No one ever said it would be easy, nor fair. Life is not fair, and the things we want most out of it will many times be the toughest to attain. Darwin's theory of "Survival of the Fittest" is as true now as it was then...but now, instead of just being physically strong, we must also have strength of will, or character...and strength of knowledge. In today's society, we must be stronger than ever, as Men, because of our belief in the natural order of things, and how convoluted things are, with "Equal Rights" -- for women, for one-eyed hornblowers, homosexual pigeon-toed goat lovers...Society has been transfixed by this ideal of equality for all, no matter what...and yet, makes adjustments in order to prove the equality between men and women (specifically, the double standards in the U.S. military, just so women have some sense of equality without being equal to the men she competes with).

We are not equal. No two people will ever be equal, for everyone is of a different age, different body style, different educational background and capability.

But we are the same...we are the same race, moving along this journey, along the road of life…

Welcome to the Viktel Aria.

I wish you well,

Greylin `//olffe