The ability to cry,

Tears pouring in sorrow or happiness,

Perhaps a mix of both

The freedom to grasp joy,

And hold it in your beating heart,

However fleeting it might be

The privilege to live,

To even exist in this beautiful world,

Regardless of how cruel it can be

The gorgeous, imperfect nature

Of being human

Above all, humans are really good at taking things for granted. We tell ourselves that life as we know it is going to continue tomorrow, but what if it doesn’t? How do we know if we’re even going to be alive tomorrow? I’m still going to have a roof over my head tomorrow. I’m still going to have clean water, we think. But actually, we don’t even think that. We don’t give thanks for everything we have, we just assume it’s always going to be there, like the grass will always be green and the sky will always be blue. But will it? Will we always wake up and have life continue as normal? How are we even supposed to know if we’ll even be able to get out of bed tomorrow? Nobody stops to give it a thought, to realize how lucky we are that we have the privilege of participating in this life, the privilege to wake up every day and feel the sunlight on our faces, to dance in the rain when the sky opens up and even to complain about the most trivial things. We march forward through the days, weeks, months, many without a destination, riding shotgun while someone else drives our life, lacking appreciation for every moment we get to just live. The people that are the happiest are the ones that live life to the fullest, appreciating the beautiful moments and having the serenity to live in the moments many might just ignore. We are lucky to be living on this earth, and the more we appreciate it the better this life will become.

To live is a treasure and a tragedy,

Some love, some hate

You might want to leave it all

But rest assured to your swinging fate.

Memories, either haunt or pacify

You are its owner to protect or defy.

A human? Yes it is beautiful to be a human

If only you could give the uproars

an eye to eye.

Your breath abandons your frame

Everytime you try to exhale

That’s where you are alive again

When you inhale and feel the gist of this

big world’s game.

To live is to obey

the fundamentals of life longing alley

To be a human is to live

to eventually fall into the pit of

Death valley.

Can you tell me how to get,

How to get anywhere but here?

I hear there are places full of sunshine and light,

Where darkness is powerless to pierce.

I’ve yet to stumble upon the key,

The key to this place they call wellness.

Yet I hear it is beyond all beauty,

And it fills the heart with gladness.

Some call it lore, A legend of myth,

Passed down to all who will hear.

But my heart longs to believe it true

As what else have I but this?

Fresh fields of daisies and sunflowers galore

Rivers streaming through fields.

Where the sun never fails to shine

And the clouds are unable to yield.

Transport me to this wondrous place,

I think I’d give most anything.

What have I to give, but my heart and my soul?

And those have already been claimed.

My hope lies not in this fading old world,

My promise lies beyond its touch.

My hope is in the world beyond

Whose assurance holds so much.

Bestill my heart to think on such things

My innermost self sent a-quavering.

Yet let me hold tight to the promises I have,

For in them I shall never sense a waivering.

It is a true gift to be on this planet right now. Humans are amazing creatures. Humans have the ability to look inside the minds of others. Humans have the ability to see a world far beyond themselves. Humans have a desire to explore that place, to expand their knowledge of it. Humans search for answers. Humans long for companionship, connection. We feel emotions and react to different situations. We evolve.

But for every Yin, there is a Yang. Being able to look inside one another is tiring, so why not just focus on ourselves? It's hard enough having to deal with our own raging emotions, already. We see the world beyond ourselves, and hunger for more knowledge, but what happens when we've discovered it all? or we think we have? What happens when that hunger can no longer be satisfied? Will we still have a purpose? We long for connection, but do we truly connect outside of our own minds? Can we ever be willingly vulnerable, show another being the darkest places in our minds? Our emotions run out of control, threatening to devour us from the inside. We treat other humans badly because of the color of their skin, a trait only controlled by DNA. We treat other humans badly because of what they have on the lower half of their bodies, another random, luck-of-the-draw situation. We kill others amongst ourselves, and for what? For one subdivision of humans to rule us all? What is the goal here? Fight until one side gets its way? We kill so many people. We evolve into a lazier species, constantly longing for convenience and pleasure. Our values go down by the generation.

We may be flawed. We may be imperfect. We may be doomed as a species. But we are still beautiful.

Look up at the stars.

Yes, all the way up there.

Now think, these giant stars, they make you seem insignificant, don't they?

Such large beings, they leave you feeling like a speck of dust upon a slightly larger speck of dust; floating around an average-sized star.

Surely that is what those giant beings believe,

That we are mere specks of dust,

floating in the galactic winds,

spiralling around the supermassive black hole at the centre of the galaxy.

We don't even begin to matter at all,

Their and our feelings, aligned.

Yes, surely that is so?

I have a question for you, and it is this:

Since when could stars understand anything that was just thought?

Stars are literally just burning gas,

That burn kind of bright.

They last a while,

And they make a lot of stuff.

That is it.

But you?

You can understand the complexity of the world;

Learn how much larger things than you actually work.

Discover, explore, comprehend.

Can the stars do this?

Of course not.

So why do you say we are insignificant compared to them?

Stars just burn away,

But you can set the universe aflame,

Or you can extinguish what is already there.

The choice is yours, the stars have no say in this.

#poem

#lifeisgreat

#starsareinsignicant