OF MICE AND MEN

September 13, 2026 | 6:00 P.M.

LITERARY: CREATIVE NON-FICTION CATEGORY

The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.

In the end, are we not all just mice? Look upon your blanched knuckles pressed against the cold, sweat-stained limestone of this dark subterranean cellar, my brother, where damp earth and the foul sweat of condemned men fill the air. Answer me, before the iron levers release our wooden cage into the blinding light above, for what if we do not have time? Ah, if only the world were not ending in a few minutes, then we could step onto the sand together without fear or restraint! You spent your youth with a heart that drew strength from high thoughts of honour and transcendent visions. Your eyes believed in the leniency of heaven, as though a noble destiny lay fully mapped before you, and what was once your fancy was soothed with dreams of virtue, of fame, and of joy. 

Were you persuaded that a pure spirit could force an unyielding universe to yield? 

Yet here you stand in this stone vault while armorers hammer cold rivets into your brass greaves with a sickening rhythm. Here you are, wearing iron armor that feels like an ill-fitting garment borrowed from a corpse, while death is ready to welcome you when the heavy lattice gate begins its agonizing ascent. In vain do we rake through the ashes of our old dreams to fan some rekindled spark, because you and I must acknowledge the truth at last. Those boyhood ideals of green laurel leaves and peaceful hearths were only ever porcelain statues, and reality has smashed them to dust upon this stone floor.

I considered Spartacus as the fitter comparison for our condition, for whenever you and I viewed the bliss of the unthinking throng, the bitter gall of envy rose within our chests and forced us to form a cruel conclusion. Why did nature form us with the wretchedness and disgrace that this vague and horribly responsible condition entails, while the simple beast we are about to duel lives untroubled by memory or anticipation? Nevertheless, anticipation is synonymous with misery. We believed our intellect rendered us divine, like a second Phaethon who seized the golden reins of his father's Sun Chariot with arrogant hands.

Foolish, how we thought mortal blood could guide celestial stallions across the zenith, the highest sky, yet life has reduced us to forlorn creatures whose grandest ambition is the painful preservation of breath. 

Jupiter's thunderbolts never miss as they shatter divine innocence into the cold waters of the constellation Eridanus. What are you afraid of losing when nothing in this world belongs to you? Consider the field mouse beneath the granary floor, that tiny animal burrows in the earth and gathers its meager store of grain without the option of long memory or frantic expectation. When the iron plowshare tears through its home, it suffers only the sudden blow of the present moment. Men of restless intellect carry the burden of imagination, and so they endure their irremediable ruin a thousand times over in the dark theater of their own minds. A proud man is simply a rodent cursed with foresight. He who builds his sanctuary out of morning clouds reaps only the tempest at dusk, and he learns too late that an unexamined hope is a slow-acting poison, just as youth is an unearned arrogance born of an unpunished heart.

Listen now as twenty thousand spectators thunder their boots against the timber floorboards above our heads. Feel how the heavy brass pulley screams against its ropes while the lift jolts upward toward that square of white sky. 

They await you; they are all here for you! 

I clutch your forearm and force your eyes to meet mine in the flickering torchlight, for a floodgate has opened in my mind, and I must set loose this river of words before terror chokes me. I burned so long in quiet desolation that you must have wondered if I loved you as my brother, but I did, I do! In the great tree of life, we are all brothers. Do you not hear how that immense whirlwind of humanity thunders and spins above us in the reality of the moment? They live in reality—perpetually renewed and eternally young—while our timorous fantasy remains a cheerless slave to every passing cloud that obscures the sun. 

We spent years in quiet chambers and built elaborate castles of thought under the delusion that life was a gentle canvas for our brush, yet I have always possessed a deeply hidden desire for something beyond this stagnant, daily existence. Here, we fight for a life whose sweet promises vanished long before the first sword was drawn. We battle the fiercest executioners, cursed with such vivid imagination that endures destruction before the first blow even falls. Adulthood brings a bloody realization spurned and trampled upon by the very fate that brought us here: we are merely wretched subjects caught in the mechanical trap of Caesar’s great conquest, and we must adapt our tender spirits to the cold edge of necessity before the gate grinds upward. 

Step now into the searing radiance of the Colosseum, where the rays of Sol strike your eyes like molten iron and the crimson canvas of the canopy snaps in the hot wind! An ocean of patricians (nobles) and plebeians (commoners) roars from tiers of brilliant marble; relish how the white sand absorbs the shadow of your sandals, for every step since childhood led us to this singular, terrifying confrontation with fate. Feel the unbearable weight of living settle fully upon your shoulders right as the clock strikes noon. I find to my amazement that the more I love mankind as a whole, the less I can bear man in particular, especially when these citizens view our purgatory as mere evening entertainment. 

Why did nature saddle us with the torments of this responsible human condition, when we might have been the unfeeling bench in the atrium or the mouse beneath the floor, untouched by the curse of anticipation? Did I live with you in a past life, or were we fated to meet in this subterranean hell only to be meagerly stepped on by the wheel of Empire? Yet here, upon this blood-soaked gravel where all our grand plans dissolve like sea foam against basalt rocks, we must leave our boyhood tears in the shadows of the Ludus; what must stay is the hardened warrior capable of bearing the infinite recurrence of normalcy. 

Without a burden, man becomes lighter than air, soaring into insignificant heights, half-real, his movements as free as they are meaningless. Which then shall we choose? We must take this bitter transition into our souls until it burns away the remnants of who we used to be. 

As we advance toward the center of the arena hand-in-hand: stand fast, hold high your shield against the serrated edge of the gladius—I entreat you, though my own chest hollows out with an impotent terror—and embrace the dreadful majesty of manhood, for we are the most miserable creatures in all of Rome. 

The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry, and they leave us nothing but grief and pain for promised joy; yet only when our early illusions lie slaughtered can we face the gods without fear. After all, are we not all just mice?

Written by: Mariela Angeline C. Ignacio/ UST Nursing Journal