The TV blares. I see some hysterical female being chased by a lunatic with a machete. She's screaming as she runs.
I see a man updating his home security system.
I read about how one victim "fought valiantly" but eventually succumbed to his kidnapper's blow.
I watch as frantic relatives pace up and down hospital hallways, lips moving in prayer, desperation clear on their faces
No matter how much I try to fight it, one feeble thought always enters my mind: All this, to save a life...
Is life really this precious? Is it so special that people would fight till their last breath for more of it?
When faced with danger, people run....they fall to their knees and scream up to the heavens for a miracle..and do they stop, just for a moment, to ask themselves the question: why though?
The building is ablaze. Blinding orange flames leap up from it's crumbling walls. Thick swirls of smoke are turning the sky black. One man runs frantically through the charred corridors, his hands cold with fear, his heart roaring in his chest. He had never imagined this would happen, what a terrible way to die; there were so many things he still hadn't done in life, it couldn't end like this...but the smoke was closing in on him, pressing him against the wasted wall like a physical presence..now there was nothing but fire...how the wood scorched under his knees..was there really no way out...and then both he and the detritus of centuries were thrown up in the air into the quivering flames, tossed high into the churning blaze, before being devoured by the inferno.
Millions of miles away, a girl was singing. Sunlight filtered through unfurling leaves and bathed the ground with splashes of green and gold. Glistening raindrops clung to petals and just did not fall. The sky was bright blue; the clouds were like crushed velvet. Birds swarmed overhead, in a circle of singing feathers that spun faster and faster until it became a wreath settling itself on the upturned, smiling face of the world.
So yes, life is this precious. And you don't know just how much until you're right on the precipice of death. And so who am i to sit on my cushioned seat and question this? Who am i to know of the grief that consumes you when you realize you want more time but there is none?
Everyone has their own ways of extricating meaning from life. Here's mine:
A carousel keeps moving,
When faced with danger, people run....they fall to their knees and scream up to the heavens for a miracle..and do they stop, just for a moment, to ask themselves the question: why though?
The building is ablaze. Blinding orange flames leap up from it's crumbling walls. Thick swirls of smoke are turning the sky black. One man runs frantically through the charred corridors, his hands cold with fear, his heart roaring in his chest. He had never imagined this would happen, what a terrible way to die; there were so many things he still hadn't done in life, it couldn't end like this...but the smoke was closing in on him, pressing him against the wasted wall like a physical presence..now there was nothing but fire...how the wood scorched under his knees..was there really no way out...and then both he and the detritus of centuries were thrown up in the air into the quivering flames, tossed high into the churning blaze, before being devoured by the inferno.
Millions of miles away, a girl was singing. Sunlight filtered through unfurling leaves and bathed the ground with splashes of green and gold. Glistening raindrops clung to petals and just did not fall. The sky was bright blue; the clouds were like crushed velvet. Birds swarmed overhead, in a circle of singing feathers that spun faster and faster until it became a wreath settling itself on the upturned, smiling face of the world.
So yes, life is this precious. And you don't know just how much until you're right on the precipice of death. And so who am i to sit on my cushioned seat and question this? Who am i to know of the grief that consumes you when you realize you want more time but there is none?
Everyone has their own ways of extricating meaning from life. Here's mine:
A carousel keeps moving,
as do we as we clamber aboard.
Visible sights are shifted, replaced, by newer ones that whisper better promises, only to be blurred out of focus again.
But what is out of sight does not necessarily have to be out of mind.
If we seek good,
If we seek good,
good that has only ever been glimpsed from a swirling haze of so much more,
we can settle it in our minds,
we can settle it in our minds,
embed it in our thoughts
and nurture it until it fights its way to the windows of our skull
and becomes all that we can see,
and becomes all that we can see,
because we remembered.
No comments:
Post a Comment