in-between being
As I type this, it is six days till my birthday and it has been six days since I’ve been in an car accident on the 110 highway. Birth and death, neutrally speaking.
Being more neutral means I should lean into rationality and imperfections. Life is filled with all of that, as much as an individual try to survive there isn’t a secrecy to living. Life isn’t a secret formula to be unlocked. It’s messy, complex, and full of contradictions, no matter how much we try to impose order. Surviving is a testament to our will, but living—that’s something else entirely. Living requires differentiation from mere existence. You can exist in other people’s memories or actions even after death, but living is an active participation in the chaos of now.
As ironic creatures who hold the possibility of both yin and yang, how can like kinds be so harsh on each other. We are walking contradictions, capable of inflicting pain on others and ourselves. How can we, who embody both balance and imbalance, expect perfection or even fairness from others?
Neutrally speaking, I don’t think that a person can hold another person accountable for the the same wrong doings they are caught with. Loveless, should I think to say — a denial of any shared human imperfection. It demands a kind of grace, an acknowledgement of imperfection not just in others but ourselves. It asks us to look at the world without judgment, to see it for what it is, and still find a way to choose existence.
Coming soon into being alive for a whole twenty-four years, I currently struggle with navigating the ambition of my own desires. A milestone perhaps, to sit in the discomfort of selfishness in the form of a reflection that I learned to care for the stubborn parts of myself that I often overlook. I want to see the world more. Not just its landscapes and cities, but the quiet corners of existence, the rhythms of lives I’ll never full comprehend. I want to learn about all forms of existence — the ways people live, love, mourn and celebrate. To know what it means to exist beyond my own limited lens, to experience how the the world lives through different hearts. I crave the stories hidden in the mundane: the vast and fleeting. It’s found in the way the sun sets differently depending on where you stand, in the subtle nuances of languages spoken with love or anger, in the rituals that makes a place feel like home. Every moment, every being, holds a truth about what it means to be alive.
And to learn about all forms of existence is, perhaps, the closest I’ll come to understanding my own. That’s all for today folks. As always, have a good day.
