The Precarious World

On the choice to remain

• To remain alive despite the absolutely horrifying prospects for earthlings of all species.
• To keep trying even though I seem to get it wrong every time.
• To believing that there is something worth loving even as everything around us crumbles.
• To remain present, to look at pain in the eye and say "que me quiten lo bailao", to more dances.

I am starting this new capsule on a day filled with misery for myself, but not by any means more miserable than any other day in the history of our species, of our planet. I look around me and I see war and famine and death and illness and all those apocalyptic omens and I feel crushed by grief. I look at my life, I look at how small it is, how plain and empty, how bad I am at making the world better in the face of all this pain instead of worse and the black hole in me grows, and grows, and devours everything warm.

I'm not a religious person, my faith lies in the mundane and it ebbs and flows like the tide. I'm okay with this, on the good days, and that's all I can ask for. Today it's meagre and wobbly like a weak flame, I have talked to old friends turned strangers, turned thorns, and I am grieving.

I am writing this because I don't want this grief and guilt to end me. I want to learn from it, I want to be better, I want to understand that pain lies ahead in all fronts and that it is no reason to give up on this precious, miraculous planet.

I want to remain.

back to list

e-mail me