Have you seen the film Dead Poets Society?
This beautiful & inspiring film introduced me
to this following poem by Walt Whitman:


O Me! O Life!

Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,

Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,

Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)

Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,

Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,

Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,

The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

                                       Answer.

That you are here—that life exists and identity,

That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.


(And what will your verse be?)

you can gain all the knowledge

you desire,

but what good is knowledge 

of you do not apply?

and what good is applying

if you do not feel?

and what good is feeling

if you do not love? 

"Hope is independent of the apparatus of logic."
- Norman Cousins


Tell me - how is it logical for the human being to live with joy, with fervor, with whimsy, and to simultaneously know that we will one day be ripped from the only home we've ever known by death?

Is this not an incredibly somber and discouraging thought? What the hell sense does that make? What's the point? If, on an unforeseen day, we will all be gone, why work toward anything? Why ask the big questions if the end result is always the same? Why spend time loving and knowing others if we will be heartbroken when they're gone?

Insert hope.

Hope dispels logic. Hope tells logic, "no - you're the concept that doesn't make any sense, and if you did make sense, who would even care about making sense?" Hope is perplexing and wild. Hope is present in the morning sun, in the smile of the passerby, in taking a breath and knowing that your lungs are still providing your body with existence.

Hope resides in a realm separate from logic. Why? Logic attempts to explain, hope succeeds in disproving. Hope, time and time again, has guided the human out of desperate and tragic circumstances. Hope indeed disproves us - when we are so very convinced that we can not go on, hope is the gentle nudge, the faint reminder that there's still a lot of life yet to be known, and so much more to discover; and yes, we can go on because hope reminds us of our inertly curious will to exist, to be alive.

Hope can not be explained with words, only felt. Hope has no equation, nor fancy theories. Hope has no end, no beginning, and no limit.

Hope simply is
and always will be.

I am me -
the only me
that will ever be.

and to be me
is to be free
and to be free
is to be me,

so let yourself be,
embrace your me,
and set yourself free.


*this poem was semi-inspired by these words by Oliver Sacks:

"There will be no one like us when we are gone,
but then there is no one like anyone else, ever.
When people die, they cannot be replaced.
They leave holes that cannot be filled,
for it is the fate - the genetic and neural fate -
of every human being to be a unique individual,
to find his own path, to live his own life,
to die how own death,"

Leo

Learn your limitations as a human

And then push past them.

You won't get far, it's true, 

But you make magnificent gains

When you muster the courage to question 

The origins of your being. 

We can only know

That we know nothing. 

And in knowing nothing, 

We really know something. 

And in knowing something, 

We indeed know everything.

To admit that you know nothing

Is to discover everything-

And this is the highest degree 

Of human wisdom.

time

it's becoming easier to think of you, now.
 time does something beautiful like that -

while we're constantly concerning ourselves
with the tedious tasks of everyday living,
time never stops moving.
and what's funny is that we forget
that time is indeed moving along with us
as we walk the path of our day, our week.
and then we have these breakthrough moments
in which we remember:
"has it really been a month, a year, a decade?"
and we realize that the hard things
have become a little less burdensome.

that's what I love about time.
It heals without us even knowing.

Today is new.
There is no other like today -

this day, this blank slate,
this unwritten page in the book
of my existence, this breath of
fresh air, this 7,489th day
of breath, of movement, of life...

And today,
I will live.