A young man decided to seek out a tomb that legend said contained the secret to the meaning of life. After a long search, he found it in the Holy Land, hidden underground among some old Roman ruins. He looked in, but it was empty. He did not know why, but he felt a powerful sense of fear and dread as he entered. Even so, he continued in and explored every nook and cranny. He saw no books or scrolls or other secrets inside. In fact, there was no writing of any kind. There was not even a coffin or a sarcophagus in the tomb. It just had an empty recessed area cut into the stone wall where a corpse or a coffin would have been placed. He lay down in the bare alcove, confused.

He meditated on his journey. He thought about the place in which he found himself, and realized that the land around the tomb was some of the best he had seen along the way. It was fertile and empty, free to anyone willing to settle on it. There were even plenty of stones left over from the scattered ruins, ready to be used for building. He resolved to settle there.

He urgently made the long journey home. He married his beloved, and together they journeyed back to the land by the tomb. Out of the old stones from the ruins he built a small house. He also built a small altar of stones above the tomb, where he and his wife would go to pray and give thanks to God.

He farmed the land, and she managed the household. Each time a new child was born, he would go into the empty tomb and carve on its wall the new child’s name and birthdate.

Some years had good harvests, and others had bad ones. Still, they worked hard, saving of their abundance in good years and living frugally in bad years. They continued to use the old stones to gradually built up their house. They found buried nearby some old scrolls on which were written words of wisdom. They first studied them, then started adding to them, writing about what they knew and had learned, about the story of their life and their plans for the future, and tales that captured their imaginations.

They built a small temple around the altar. They had more children. They continued to use the old stones to build up their house and the temple. The man and wife added more to the writings, and used all of them to teach their children.

More time passed. The children grew into adulthood and married, settled close by and started their own families and farms. They built houses, using the old stones at first, and then quarrying new stones as the old stones ran out.

Their grown children taught their own children now. The man continued to carve the names and birthdates of each descendant on the tomb walls.

They all continued building onto the temple. It grew larger and finer and grander. As they learned and discovered, they wrote, including the stories of their lives—of their past, present, and hoped futures—and of tales of courage and wisdom, virtue, and hope.

The man and wife reached the twilight of life. They died. Their descendants buried the two of them, leaving them to rest in a tomb that was no longer empty, with the names of their descendants surrounding them on the walls, and the temple the family had built together—now great and beautiful—rising above them.

And those descendants continued to improve and build onto the temple, to read and add to what had been passed down to them, and to build their own families, houses, temples, and epics.