Why do some people exist happily, while others seem doomed to an everlasting grief? Why do some people’s lives come to a harrowing cease right at the prime peak of their breath? Which events are mere coincidences, and which are decided for us by some materialized figure who holds the universe with such evident carelessness? At what point, does Answer meet Truth?And at which moment do they then show themselves to the world, taking their masks off and restoring balance in the fluidity of thought?

Humans tend to go about their entire lives with one foot inside of the incoherent idea that everything will work out in the end; we tell ourselves that we do not need answers because answers do not need us- that if God, or the Universe, does not want us to know these things, we will not know them. But I refuse to settle for the quaint pharisaical notion that we, as human beings, and possible stepping stones to an inexorable and revolutionary philosophy, are exempt from knowing Life’s Truth, all because it goes against the rule of thought. Some people have vices, some people have vast insecurities, some people have the weave of normalcy creating a delusive bed for them to lay upon with deceptive content, but me- I have questions. I have thoughts that exist outside of the realm of possible conclusions. One may look up at a sky filled with radiant stars and think, “wow,” but all that exists inside of me is, “how?”

Maybe I have missed the answers while forgetting to look in the nooks and crannies of all the wrong places. Maybe they got frightened and scurried off into a dark abyss to hide from being discovered at all. Maybe the questions I ask are too unfamiliar for even the sacred soul of something magnificent to expatiate upon. Do I contradict myself by looking for answers in between the lines of an unwritten book?

I have only occupied a space on Earth for a short while, but I guess that all depends on how you look at it. I can’t say that I have only lived a small portion of my life, because I truly don’t know how much of it I have left. Amongst the time I have spent, I’ve tried to perpetuate feelings of serendipitous security, but it seldom ends the way I desire it to. In fact, it always ends the same way- my thoughts in scattered pieces like individual men in shambles, locked away in a prison cell for reasons all different from one another, their conclusions decided for them, but never a conclusion justified adequately enough.

I walk down cobble-stoned streets covered in eavesdropping weeds popping from the grout of a pathway. I walk with one foot in front of the other and I generate thoughts that can only proliferate while looking out into a sky shaded the color of a ripe peach being peeled back, showing the soft crevice of the color orange. I notice the silhouettes of beautifully withered Holly Trees standing sturdy as a faint breeze blows the scent of their decomposing bark towards me. So I walk further and further, and I think thoughts that can only exist as thoughts while I am captivated by the sky, and I smell the detris of an ill tree, and all of these senses are so aware to the fibers of my own feeble self.

I lose myself in the thoughts of childhood, my mind scouring previous years to see if there were clues that could serve redemption to this bitter, cold, and inquisitive case. I think of my mother’s warm hugs and her honey-blossom scent trailing our apartment as she sat on the edge of my bed, petting the brim of my hair and wishing that my youth would never end, that I could be six years old forever, that I could savor innocence that she never knew.

I remember dreaming of dragons with fire-breathing abilities while I still bordered the waking world. In one eye, I could see a large beast with purple, scaly skin, guarding a dungeon withholding the souls of sinners. In the other eye, my mother- her delicate hand on my head, whispering soft and subtle wishes while she believed I was entranced by slumber. Somewhere, I would fall out of this half-wake sleep-lucid state and into rest. I’d continue to dream of dragons and fire and eventually, a knight in bronze armor who would save the day and set the sinners free as their vices were washed away, and they were given a second chance.

  I begin my journey back home when nightfall has arrived and the dark silhouettes have blended with their surroundings. I cannot smell the Holly Trees any longer because the wind is not blowing from the same direction since I have wandered off onto a path that is neatly kept. Here, there are no eavesdropping weeds bracing themselves to my footsteps. My appreciation has faded, my focus has weakened its grasp on my brain, and my thoughts scrounge the wavering wonders of my mind.

I think of my mother once again, I think of her warm hugs slightly losing their comfort each time an embrace engulfed me. I think of her new scent, a white-lilly mist that never seems right. I think of her wish for my everlasting innocence, and then I think of the day she must have stopped making that wish. Maybe she thought a loss of purity was inevitable, or maybe she decided it was fair to take the shelter that I was surrounded by and lift it far above my head to show me the deepest harrows of the universe, and its ceaseless, questionable, curdling chaos. Maybe there is a perfect time for every child to receive the answers to questions they didn't have a chance to be curious about, and my perfect time was surpassed long ago.

It is here, off in a land of wistful woes, off in the trail amidst a discouraged darkness, I shut my eyes and see light.

There is an end to everything and everyone. We are on a incessant search for it, this end- to gain closure with definite promise. We may not even know it, but every move and decision we make, moves us closer or farther away from it. Many times, it finds us before we find it. It is silent, hardly prosperous, and takes an epiphany to realize it was in our grasp at all. And when we finally do, a new beginning with a new end has come along, and the adventure starts yet again.
 

This- is the vicissitude of life.