Life

I talked to an old friend a few weeks ago. We talked about the creases of our new lives, laughed about the old, made fun of our selves a little. He sent me a few paragraphs that felt bittersweet and ridiculously familiar. It was something he'd saved in his 'notes' section on his phone years ago. Something that I'd written when I was 15, when he asked me:

'What is life?'

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I will phrase the unreasonable, paint the unimaginable, describe the impossible. Life is a little flower that bursts through the soil and reaches up and up to drink the rays of sunshine. Life is the crystal stream flowing through rocks, so small and helpless. And so beautiful. It is that little stream that will turn into a river, a sea, an ocean, that may crash and tear through everything in it's way, or bring life and future to everything around it. Life is what we see, what we touch, what we hear. It's what we feel, around, and within us. It is that invisible, unavoidable cloak of light and dark that hangs between birth and death. It gives us strength, makes us weak. It makes us good, and makes us evil. It gives us hope, while sucking every last strands of it from within our souls. It makes the old old, and the young young. It makes a person beautiful and ugly.

You ask me, what is life? And I will tell you. It is that separation between ambition and apathy. Even for those who are not scared of death, what is death without life? What is dying without living? Are we all so desperately drowning in fear of 'death'? Is it so scary to fall asleep and never wake up? It might well be. But it is not the dying that we are scared of, it is the idea of never waking up again. We are scared of the unknown that comes beyond the blackness, as we see it, of death. We are scared of the end of this 'life' and the beginning of this 'nothingness'. Because we do not know. And often a lack of knowledge feels like a weakness. Which is oh-so-terribly true. Just stop for one fraction of a moment of a second.

But what is that? A second? A measure of what? Of air passing by? Not air, for air is inconstant. Of the waters that flow? Not water, for water cannot be grasped unless it itself so wills. It must be the measure of thought. Coming from life, from the mind, from the soul created by the mind created by the body created by life. But who are we to even try to capture thought? And from here comes the question - are we really trying to capture and measure life with that which life itself has urged us to create? We only live in time because we are afraid of time's end. If one was to live for a thousand, a million years, each passing hour would matter as much as it does when we are pushed towards the unknown, at the same time trying to protect one another from it.

Just think of all those times when we tell each other 'Life is hard'. Is it really?

Because how can we tell if we cannot define life?

Life is eternity, and the absence of it.

Life is death, for without life it would not be called so, and so there would be none of it.

Life is each breath we take, each thing we feel, each thought we take in and bring out. Life is the word, the thought, the possibility. It gives us power, and makes us weaker.

It crushes us, and builds us up. As people. As who? As people. As the children of life, and the gods of life, it's source. Life is everything that comes between birth and death, and yet what reaches far beyond both. It is everything from beginning to end, when neither exist. Life is magic. People try to describe life and explain it. They try to grasp it and control it. But it can't be. For life cannot be described as anything but a contradiction between everything we see and feel and touch and everything we are, and everything around us.

Life is life, and without the need for words, it has a power within every single one of us. Life is beautiful.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hmm. And now, here I am, trying to fit my mind into a memory of myself. A puzzle piece, crooked in a slightly different way. Time really does change us, I guess.

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I will consider the everyday, laugh at the ridiculous, discuss the conflicting. Life is the ray of sunshine that kisses my cheek through the frosty window as I sip my too-hot mug of coffee. Life is the scatter of leaves as I hurry down the street, too-late, laces untied, and nod hello to the bus driver. Life is what we feel, what we do, what we doubt; the pep talks you give to yourself after yet another mid-week existential crisis. The strangers we lock eyes with on the street, the accidental friends we find in forbidden places, the homeless man we smiled at apologetically while we walked right past.

It is real, it is painful, hell, it's terrifying. But it's the one constant that stays while the world around us changes. Until it doesn't.It gives us hope, while sucking every last strands of it from within our souls. It doesn't give us purpose, but it gives us a chance to find purpose within ourselves. A sapling that bursts through the soil and reaches up and up to soak in the rays of whatever it is that we can give it.

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Life is what you make it, really.