Photo by Almos Bechtold on Unsplash
Life.
This word of four letters bears our hopes and dreams and loves. The letters withhold the time we were just kids and the word didn’t daunt us because we had our hands full living it.
We look back on our lives and prepare for the future; yet we’re in the midst of life that will escape our grasp if we don’t stop and look around.
I have this life in me that I can’t contain. It bursts from each letter of this loaded word as it’s repeated in my head.
When I look out into the darkening sky, I see a changing world. I’m searching for my place in it. Still, there’s so much inside us yet to be explored, mountains and rivers of our hearts and souls.
Part of this I’m writing on an orange, chalky rock that reminds me of Mars. The sun is setting, and dark clouds are rolling in as if a storm is on the way.
I sketch the horizon into my notebook with my pen, attempting to portray the details of what I see.
It’s my dream to impart this life that I foster, this life that I love, onto the world out there, but there’s resistance; we all feel it at one point or another.
We tell ourselves not to act on certain urges that want to break free from our soul. We fear what others might think if we did.
We suppress the dreams that we dreamt as little kids who couldn’t care less what others thought.
While we may scale the mountains of our planet, ticking off accomplishments that look good on paper, we hardly ascend the journey to our hearts.
The wind blows cold against my skin, and I can feel the onset of rain. I wonder why this makes me so happy.
I think about cold days around roaring fires and smelling the wood burn. The grey sky and passionate clouds evoke an emotion in me, like the life I see forming out there forms, too, in my spirit with each cold gust, and the rain is my thoughts that I won’t hold back.
I cherish what adds color to life; I watch the maple leaves fall and crack as they blow in the wind. Some are yellow and some are red; some are a mixture of green and orange.
What do maple trees look like for the rest of the year? Are the leaves green? I don’t think so, but I’m not sure.
Maybe I notice them this time of year because I’m looking for something to remind me of the changing season. The leaves have made me think; the leaves have made me write.
Perhaps the dark and grey sky is vital to perceive the color of the changing leaves. I overlooked the beautifully imperceptible details with my eyes focused solely on the clear blue sky in other seasons of endless sun.
The colors and the smells fill me with joy; so do the Pines which drop their cones to the earth like Maples drop their leaves.
If I can provide that same feeling to another human being, then maybe that’s my place, and the rest will figure itself out.
It could be that instead of shying away from whatever it is we love because it won’t make us money or it might seem unusual, we should embrace that love with the entirety of our being, for precisely that reason.
Follow your love, your passion, what lights your soul on fire, even when others may differ, because nobody knows what the hell they’re doing anyway.
We’re all scared of something; fear is a companion, a sign that we care, and it won’t go away until we face it, until we own it, until we use it to dig deeper within our hearts to try to figure out what makes us so scared.
Is it challenging the world out there, or the one inside that says, be realistic?
Our time on this earth is short. We have one word of four letters to make our own, a gift or a burden, a blessing to others, or a curse.
Mold it and break it down until there’s nothing left to discover.
Life can be simple. It starts with the question, what do you love?
Love, a word that bears as much weight as life. These two words can weigh us down or strengthen us with each step, each test overcome, each time we don’t settle.
These words will form us into all we’re meant to be, which is so much more than we think.
Live with your heart, and you’ll find what you love. Find what you love, and make it your life.
Perhaps we’ll never find the answer to why we’re here. Answers are overrated — I don’t think we’re asking enough questions.
Life; life; life. Discover what the word means to you.