learning to love

"I'm really good at Ordinary Differential Equations, I just got straight As, but I hate it."

Said no human, EVER.

Upon discussing with other people things that they like - especially when it has something to do with studying - very seldom will people love doing something they are really terrible at, or hate something they are really (really) good at. Of course, you have your odd exceptions both ways, but most of the time someone passionate about mathematics will be good at mathematics, and a teacher who loves teaching will... well, be good at teaching. This rather plain thought made me overthink of the things we love.
For the purpose of this text, I will use my turbulent love/hate relationship with mathematics to explain my point. I used to enjoy math, and was actually good at it for a few years. When I started having trouble with it, I had some private classes and ended up learning, while in second grade, things that would only be given in fourth grade. Things moved along smoothly, sometimes I would get frustrated, but then I'd understand it and I'd relearn to like it.
However, as the subjects progressed - and I had no more private teacher to help me - my profound hatred that seemed to come from my very soul increased, and I found it heartbreaking how one could spend so much time trying to understand something, and still just get wrong answers. I felt it was a waste of time and found it to be very stupid that I have to learn something my brain just didn't seem built to do.
When I was near my final year, I had to get some help a few times to get myself ready for my exams to enter universities. The situation was critical. I got two people to teach me some topics that I was exceptionally bad at and finally learnt them, and remember to this day how my heart leaped in joy while sitting the exam to go into the best university in São Paulo and found one of the things I hated, but learnt and eventually learned to like, was in the exam. I had learnt to love it because I learnt to understand it.
That often happens with people.
Whenever we meet someone for the first time, the temptation in labelling this person in your mind until the end of time is very, very real. The irrational attribution of a title based on a single first impression, absent of thought, investigation, observation or actual interaction might come easily to mind, especially when there is something about the person that makes them different from you - negative labels fly to people you find it hard to relate to. They can be either too quiet or too loud, or too needy, or too isolated, too friendly, too rude, anything at all.
However, once you take the time to talk to the person - get to know about their story, where they come from, what's their favourite colour (ok, maybe not that, but you get the point), hear their ambitions in life, you start to understand them as more than a label: they become a human being. Just like you.
You start to understand not just what your impressions were, but things that might motivate or explain certain traits. Quirks you found were extremely annoying and inexplainable suddenly make sense. And suddenly, upon this recognition, upon rational enlightenment and comprehension, you have learnt to love the other; in the 2,000 year old words once said, you learnt to love your neighbour.
So when people say that they HATE someone, I can't help but think they aren't just saying they have cross feelings towards someone, but that they simply don't understand someone. Maybe because of a lack of opportunity or effort, that person is just a great big question mark - and, well, for curious human beings as we are, we don't like question marks without answers. Like with math, it's easier to just decide we don't like it because we're not good at understanding that.
Upon further ponderation on the matter, I painfully realised this was not an original idea at all. Poets, writers and preachers have come across this same concept.
It is mentioned by L.M. Montgomery in a quote I have failed to reencounter precisely, but it says something like:

"We only hate that which we do not understand" 

L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea 

And going from the happy small universe in Avonlea to futuristic science fiction into Ender's Game, we have:

“In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. And then, in that very moment when I love them.... I destroy them.”
- Orson Scott, Ender's game

Ok, so we don't need to think of enemies and destruction, but I think you get the point I'm trying to get across: understanding someone may be a key factor in learning to love them. 

While thinking of love and knowing, this brought me back to 1 John 4. 

7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
- 1 John 4.8, NIV

I can already imagine: "Now, so you were saying we have to know other people to learn to love them, and now you're saying that to love someone we need to know God? What does one thing have to do with another?!" Here's the thing, if God is the creator of all things, he is also the creator of all people and, therefore, understands every inch and ounce of them - so, ultimately, he is the one able to love absolutely every person scattered throughout space and time. And... if we truly get to know him, spend time with him, we learn to understand him and therefore, love him. And it is when we understand him, that we are able to start to understand others under this new light: that every human being has a intrinsic value, a uniqueness, a lovely soul. And this enables us to love much more powerfully, because it allows us to know them even before a first word is exchanged. We learn to see this intrinsic value even before we know they exist: we learn everyone is a fully complex and eternal soul, and just because of that they already are worthy of being loved. Any other knowledge after that, just adds onto the love!

So, after my rather disorganised line of thought, ultimately, what I'm trying to say here is that while we do not understand man kind in its natural value, and while we are not open to try to understand one another, we will necessarily fail in any endeavour to love. While we try to fit people into our expectations, into our standards, we will be loving ourselves more than anything else. We do not need to necessarily agree with all of it anymore than I have to agree with maths that '+' be the symbol of summing, as long as I understand what maths means by '+' and respond accordingly to it. Maybe if we just give each other a chance, some time, some effort... maybe then this love can be made complete in us. And just how wonderful it is to learn to love because we have been loved first. 

To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us.”
- Timothy Keller, The meaning of marriage

Call each thing by its rightful name

There is this word we have in portuguese that scholars claim cannot be translated into any other language, and peculiarly, it is being away from Brazil (and from portuguese) that I seem to be coming to understand it and all it's meaning - and learning the importance of rightful words altogether. As many words in portuguese, it is not a precise or practical concept, but subjective and emotional -  I think that says enough about the brazillian culture on it's own-, and we call it saudade.
We can use it in a number of constructions, we can say that we are feeling saudades, or we can say we are with saudades. Overall, it refers to the feeling of longing when apart from something or someone, the longing to be reunited. Personally, I love particularly when the construction used is "estou com saudades" (I am with saudades), simply because it makes it sound like Saudades is someone, and sometimes it does feel like that.  When you really, really miss someone or something, it's like you have this gloomy shadow hanging above you, weighing your heart down and darkening your thoughts to an extent you many times doubt is healthy. It is like someone that follows you around constantly reminding you that you are away from the one you have saudades of.
Many people claim that it is like saying you miss something/someone, but I don't think it's exactly the same, and I'll tell you why. Suppose you had a piece of furniture in your room all your life and someday, for whatever reason, had to get rid of it. There are a few ways you will feel about this, one of them is you miss it in the sense you have the feeling something is missing just because it used to be there every day, or you can have saudades and long to have that piece of furniture back. You see how it's different?
But there is one thing about brazillians, and that is that we tend to throw big words and big gestures around carelessly. For example, when you meet someone - even if for the first time - before you know it, they are hugging and kissing you, and with what we call 'silly hands' all over you like you have known each other for AGES. It's rather crazy, because kissing and hugging are a big deal to other cultures - and, well, to me too - and yet they are equally distributed to random strangers and to long missed friends with no distinction whatsoever. Though many people like this 'friendliness', to me it sounds as absurd as wearing a ball gown every single day: yes, ball gowns are nice, and they are meant to be enjoyed, but when you wear something every day it gets old, crumpled, stained, and you no longer have something as special as you would want when, say, going to a ball.
Sometimes people will even use saudades unrequitedly; many times they will say they feel saudades when, in fact, all they do feel is that they miss you, or feel the distance, or feel like it would be nice to just know where you are in life - though not with the rational decision that that might be a good idea ever DREAMING of reaching their subjective emotions.
However much I would love to be able to say that is restricted solely to one culture, it is with great unease I admit that though we, as brazillians, are very good at it, we are not alone in this painful incorrect use of language. Many words have become tattered, used and very much worthless along the years from far too much use.
The word once used to describe something awe-inspiring like God in the bible - Awesome - is currently used to describe a sandwich or a T-shirt. Love, so abundant in meaning, in fullness, in importance is ridiculously spat out to say that you love a pair of shoes or a new pop song (a tune that I will be very much impressed if it lasts on people's minds for more than 2 weeks).
We have become illiterate fools in our speech, for where once could describe with intensity and accuracy, we now fail to save words and guard them to only use them when it is requited and wise, for that matter. I am unsure if this occurs because we have incresed the value attributed to things like a sandwhich or a pair of shoes, or if we have brought down our feelings to the level of things and therefore brought down the weight of these words. Maybe we just forgot the definitions, or just have reduced our vocabulary. Whatever the reason is, it makes me think of how many misunderstandings in feeling and in communication occur from such careless errors.

River flows in you

"So. Water. We're made of water"

My friend said in a joking tone, trying to change the topic under discussion at the table since none of us knew much about law. Attaining to my usual and comfortable facts due to my tiredness to think, I just laughed and said "Well, technically about 70% of us is made of it anyway."
The thing is, at the time I didn't remember, but later, as I walked by the River Magical Mirrors Road, as I called it (since it sounds much better than just "Riverside path"), I struggled with a few thoughts and brought to mind a quote I read recently:

"If then you are wise, you will show yourself rather as a reservoir than a canal. For a canal spreads abroad water as it receives it, but a reservoir waits until it is filled before overflowing, and thus communicates, without loss to itself, its superabundant water. In the church today, we have many canals, few reservoirs."
- Saint Bernard of Clairvaux

Maybe we are made of water, not only our literal 70%, but also ourselves in an entire metaphorical way. I wondered: what am I? A reservoir? A canal? An ocean, endlessly indecisive about it's boundaries? Or a still glimmering lake, safe and predictable?
I pondered about the quote, and I may be a fool for doing so, but I disagreed with it - I do not believe we were intended to be a reservoir in the first place. From what I understand in the statement, we would have to be filled, complete, and wise before doing anything, before overflowing, teaching and helping, and, honestly, I don't feel we can ever reach such a level. Therefore, we would be waiting on a day never to come to begin to overflow.
In a more practical sense, I think we are much more like rivers at present. At a given moment, a spring comes up in us, surfacing clean water that can sustain life, and begins to dig its way in through the dust and mud of a harsh world. We reflect to some extent the reality surrounding us, and may or may not reveal all of the depth - or lack thereof - that we have: we can be dull, dark, unrevealing and simply reflect thoughtlessly our surroundings, or we can purely be transparent, honest and let the light shine through us revealing quite obviously how deeply we go.
We make our way, guarded and guided by obstacles in our path and carve our markings into the world - collecting bits and pieces of where we pass, carrying that with us changing and being changed during the course of our flow, condemned to,  in order to make a difference and go somewhere, never be able to go back to being exactly the same as we once was. The specs of dust we collect here, will not be the same as the ones we collect there. In different parts of our flow we may have been purer, others polluted, but we still can be purified during our course (very mercifully for São Paulo's Rio Tietê). We may become drier at times, and flow timidly, but the little we have we share with the life we try to sustain. We may very well overflow - and sometimes may even cause a hazard because of it.
We carry on, and the people and events we pass by will change us forever, and they may accompany us for a bit - rivers may cross, rivers may fuse together, and rivers may even, even though meeting, never mix (as happens with the Amazonian Meetings of the water in the Rio Negro). Or these rivers may mix and become one, or may even separate after flowing together for a considerable time. No one can tell.
We flow and plunder on into oceans, oceans that never fill (Ec. 1.7) and oceans in which we can get lost. I like to think the ocean towards which I am flowing is the infinite ocean, an ocean of love and eternity, an ocean in which we find what we were searching for when plundering through the mud, an ocean that welcomes us and gives us meaning... An ocean in which we lose ourselves in order to be found. An ocean in which we resign our power of choice in our rout in order to be a part of something much, much bigger.

pluriverses

The streets were silent as I walked back home, and my footsteps echoed like a small frail heartbeat on the concrete. Due to not feeling perfectly well, greatly due to tiredness, I resorted to what I usually do on that occasion: putting one foot ahead of the next steadily and only cross streets when the light is green for me (something, I shamefully must admit, am accounted guilty for not doing so often).

However, my focus was robbed in a few moments and my eyes fled away from the course I had set briefly upon encountering from the corner of my eye a bright star that accompanied me to my left, but I just let it be, there in the sky. It was only upon the comfort of arriving to my street I granted my dizzy self the right to look up - after all, I was nearly home.

I looked up to find that there were several little bits and pieces of archaic light shining back at me, forgotten up in the sky. As I arrived in front of my flat, I forgot all about my concerns, about the numbing cold, about everything. I took my hat off - in a practical sense, it improved my view, but my more poetical self says it might have been in some sort of reverence to the largeness of the universe, to the ancient light shining testimony to our own little entropy coming down upon us from stars, reflected off of planets, travelling through the vastness of the cosmos, into earth’s atmosphere, through the lens of my glasses to hit my retina where my specialised neurones quickly collected this processing it abstractly through electrical impulses which traveled across my brain all the way to my occipital lobe, from where the information would be silently distributed to millions and millions of neurones in different regions causing me to consider and think of what I saw.

My mind went in a million directions, maybe as numerous as the stars itself.

I thought of it rationally, the rudimentary and self taught astronomy and astrophysics I have had access to in recent years. I thought of a metaphor I once came up with and thought was wonderfully creative - and maybe it was so for an 8 year old - that ‘friends are like stars, even if you could see them, they were always there’. I thought of how funny it is that we are stardust which can, ultimately, appreciate itself whenever appreciating the night sky. I thought of how maybe, just maybe if even for just a bit we all took a moment to reverently take our hats of, strip ourselves of little daily concerns that seem so extraordinarily troublesome, forget things that seem vastly important in our lives and just looked up to see how small we are - both before space and time - we would realise how very small both ourselves and our concerns are. But, at the same time, see that we are also gloriously significant: able to translate all these dots of light into metaphors, mathematical formulations, poems, songs, and beautiful words to one another.

Looking up reminded me of our paradox as humans: we are surprisingly intricate and complex - holding within us each a unique entire universe - and yet, we can also be extraordinarily futile and useless to the universe: if we cease to exist, it will carry on perfectly fine. We think we are part of the beauty, of the view - but we are just silent spectators in awe, given a chance to see beauty and love in a world we will never, ultimately, belong to. At the end of the day, in an equally glorious and fearsome way, we are everything, and we are nothing.



I heard some footsteps approaching, and suddenly became aware of the fact I had no idea how long I stood by the river looking up at the ancient skies: the world swallowed me up once again into it’s cares, but with a certain sense of wonder and of peace. Maybe the world, cosmos, beauty will carry on even in my absence - but none of that harsh reality can erase the wonder and exquisite honour we have in being a little piece assisting in the functioning in this vastly complex organic, ever changing machinery that is the universe. Due to this ultimate dynamic in it’s functioning, we are comforted knowing, that even if this machinery continues to work, we have a chance to allow it to never work in the exact same way - but it’s in our hands the choice as to the changes we leave, if we break other pieces, or if we help fix them.

Or, then again, I may just be spending FAR too much time with Anne of Green Gables.

Harder than rocket science

There is a sign in one of my University buildings that says: Working towards a data driven society. I always found that confusing, from the first time I saw it up to now. That got me thinking: data? Is that what drives us, or what we want to drive us? Numbers? Information? Is that what they think it’s all cracked up to be?

When I come to think of it, maybe there is not much work to be done to be the ‘data driven society’, because in a way I feel we already are so. Everything and everywhere there is information, we are being constantly bombarded with information: information on what we should or shouldn’t do, on what we need  - and didn’t even know it! Thanks, advertisements! I really did not know I needed all that to be truly  happy! Information on what is happening everywhere: politics, economics, and even celebrity scandals - oh, how was there ever life when you did not know the most recent news about the Kardashian’s latest scandal, Taylor Swift’s latest boyfriend or the clothes - or lack thereof - Lady Gaga wore to a big event. 

We suddenly feel like information is the solution to everything. If we do more research, discover more things, spend longer hours in a lab, get cited more times, sell more news… then we will be closer to solving mankind's issues. If we could only educate everyone, then everything would be great! If we could know everything from the neutron star collision to the positron emission, we could fix the whole world. Not questioning the role of education and it’s undeniable importance, but are we really sure about that? Is that what we really want? Or, more accurately, is that what we really need? 

The thing is, we are treating science and information like our new religion - like it will redeem us, it will save our race from the destruction (which, by the way, most of the time we inflict on ourselves). Science said this. This was published, it must be true. We can now fix the world. 

But the thing about science - the real  science - is that one of the most important things to know is how little we know. The scientist is not known for screaming ‘Eureka!’ and orchestrating DNA into a new perfect combination. Scientists are not priests, chosen ones, or gods. They are just regular people who happen to be very curious and are trying to use that in order to earn a living. 

Most of the time, science is frustrating. It’s tiring. You don’t understand half of what’s going on in your blessed PCR or why your immunofluorescence hasn’t lit up like a Christmas tree. And, even if we do get results, they are not irrefutable. Sure, lots of people say they try to refute it - the academy is merciless. But is it? 

Why then do stories about big lecturers who had 17 papers withdrawn still come up because of inaccurate information? Well, the 17 papers got through somehow, got published, and treated as truth. 

The Publish or Perish barbaric way of life is merciless, more than the academia many times. You know that day when you just really need to get your job done, have family problems, are completely emotionally wrecked and your work doesn’t seem to do too well? Scientists have those days too. You know when you expected one outcome from your work and get something completely different? That feeling, frustration? Scientists also have that. And, although the objective is to be ‘impartial’ in data analysis, how can you? As a scientist, something I have been studying is how all your information is processed and goes through circuitry related to emotion - and nothing can change that. It just does, it's part of your natural neuronal circuitry. All that you study, analyse and research will undergo processing and will be influenced by your culture, social practices, memory, personal history and emotions. And, yes, this is very likely to affect the outcome of your work - even if you are a scientist. We don’t have a little switch to turn off our feelings, or a dose of amnesia when analysing data. 

But, suppose that doesn’t matter. That the brutality of the academia will confirm the veracity in your work, and that you manage to produce information. Suppose we did learn everything about everything. We have science to be immortal, science to clone people. We have science to go to several planets. But how will that affect us? 

The greatest contradiction in this information chase is the fact that if we do not have information to back up our decisions, we will use excuses to do so. In the end, mankind will just do what they want to do and at the moment it comes in handy putting the blame on the fact that we don’t know everything about the universe. If information really did ‘fix everything’, a scientist studying the importance of sleep for cognition would not be working overnight on his paper to be sent by his sponsors’ deadline, kept awake for a week on caffeine, red bull and obscene amounts of sugar. An oncologist wouldn’t be sitting outside the hospital smoking. But still, these things happen. Still, we do… what we want to do.

Saying the world is as it is because of lack of information is at least naïve, if not a plainly stupid assumption; we cannot use ignorance as an excuse for bad decisions. Independently of the amount of information we have, we will make decisions - and they will have to be made even in not ideal circumstances - and we must accept the consequences of this. We will make decisions which will affect both us and others, and we have to accept that. Sometimes it is our fault.

We cannot say there are huge social gaps because the world does not have enough education. We cannot say that if there were more information there would be less suffering, less death. We cannot say information will solve all our problems. That is a childish way of resigning responsibility for what the world has come to be. 

One day, we may be closer to having more information. But what good will that information be if we do not have the maturity to use it? If there is suffering, most of the time it’s because we inflict it on each other. If there are social differences, it is because we have failed to learn to share our resources. Maybe, before looking into our telescopes at the far off stars or into the microscope to see structures so small we cannot see with the naked eye, we should first learn to look at and really see that which is near and those which are like us: a human soul, vastly more complex than any other equationable or deductive or dissective item in the universe. It is another human, with another universe in them, and they ought to be treated with the love and respect you would expect to be treated - just because it’s the right thing to do. 

Maybe then, we can learn to do something useful. Maybe then our mechanical, impersonal intelligence may start to become wisdom. Meanwhile, I’m just trying to figure out in which point of history loving a fellow human being became more difficult than doing rocket science. 

overwhelming thankfulness

It seems hardly fair to chose a limited amount of things (or people, for that matter) to be thankful for. But just thinking of these things already humbles my heart to an extent that makes it impossible to not want to say the 'thank you's aloud.
Thinking only of all the fascinating beauty in the world - the vastness and mysteries of phenomena we cannot fully grasp like black holes that keep us humble, to the small fragility of life in a flower in bloom that soothes our soul - I am already overcome with a feeling that not a million kisses to the Blarney stone could make me eloquent enough to express.
More than that, to be in the select group of people worldwide that has food, warmth, a roof over my head and can only write this because I am one of those privileged enough to know how to read and write... all this makes me feel like I have much more than I am worthy of. If I need water, I just open the tap - I don’t have to walk miles and miles with a bucket over my head. If I want to talk to someone, phones, email, letters, anything can be used. The "saudade" can be eliminated briefly without much effort.
This time that technology has given to me has allowed me to spend a great deal of time studying, thinking and trying to understand some bits and pieces in the universe and trying to find ways to help patients be treated and help people, even if only a little. And for that, I am also very thankful.
I have also been very privileged beyond my imagination to receive a scholarship - to study abroad, to get to know people from across the globe from several cultural origins and customs. Sometimes I have to remind myself: "Yes, you are in Ireland. Your dream of studying abroad has not only come true, but it has come true intertwining your future into your roots". Here I have had a chance to learn of things I love, to show my work to more than the bottom of my drawer, to talk to people who's work I admire and I would never dream of even seeing from afar. These have been three crazy, crazy months of dreams I no longer believed were alive in me coming true.
If all this weren't enough to overwhelm me with thankfulness, there still is more: What makes all that worth it. After all, as Chris McCandless put it, "Happiness: only real when shared". I have a wonderful family that are there for me, that pray even from afar, that read all my nonsense about this trip. I have wonderful friends back in Brazil who still write to me - complain I don’t send news, or even just share their news, offer to help in what they can, and celebrate every joy I have here. That seek me out, and that are supportive and are with me, in spite of the space between us.
I have also met people here that have already become part of me, and that I can’t imagine life without anymore (by the way, sorry guys, nobody's going back to your home countries, you shall be kidnapped and taken with me wherever I end up!). Friends that are supportive, that listen, that show such love I no longer believed was out there; friends that have become a family, that have become part of me in the most unlikely ways, again, that I never believed possible. I'm still trying to figure out how in a few months or weeks one can become so important.
Maybe that’s what this year - more exactly, these 3 months have been: of teaching me to believe. To believe in things I didn't think were real, or possible for that matter. Of teaching me that the big dear world is so fascinating, is so radiantly beautiful and unpredictable, that it can keep alive things you never knew were alive: hope, dreams, love, joy, patience, kindness, goodness, beauty. All burning beacons lighting our way to keep us going.
I thank God for his love for us which made him give us all these wonderful things (and yet not let us forget where our real home is), for his faithfulness, for his unchangeable and yet absolutely unpredictable character. I thank him for listening to every hopeful prayer I had forgotten, every dream I had given up on, and for bringing me to where I am now: making me feel fully alive, living the best of days, feeling that I finally am doing what I was made to do, and that I am where I am meant to be.
"And I thank each person taking part in this journey of belief in the past few months, be you near or far: teaching, supporting, loving in the most beautiful ways, listening, and being as kind on the soul as that blooming flower and more complex than black holes as only a human can be in the most glorious way possible. And, well, I don’t really need to list names - you know who you are. Thank you."

How fragile we are

One would think that with me wanting to be a doctor, seeing corpses on a daily basis, drawing dissected people, it would have hit me beforehand - but it didn't. It took a Human Nervous System class opening a rat for me to realise just how very fragile we are. 

It need not be by spear, by steal and flesh becoming one. It need not be by incredible force, or dramatic hit that the body can fail. As I watched the rat - already drowsy and motionless being pinned onto a cork board by hands and feet, in a gruesome resemblance to a crucifixion, I had no reaction but to feel my stomach turning in itself watching the beating heart exposed and the inner organs spilling out carelessly. With a small guillotine the body was soon headless and with a pair of scissors and tweezers the brain and every nerve was soon exposed. Scissors and tweezers. That was what exposed the main organ giving this rat thought, reaction, emotion, life. All of nature's endeavour to protect the brain and cerebellum, quickly pushed aside by human ability to 'solve problems'. 

It was during those brief moments, a bit less then an hour, that all my dreams and all of humanities problems seemed so pointless. You can work as much as you want for a perfect body, to dress it glamorously and have beautiful hair - it won't change it's destination. You can work as much as you want, fight as much as you want for money, success, diplomas, recognition and some spark of glory - you can't take any of those to the grave any more than you brought into the world when you arrived. It seemed plainly pointless that we should obsess over such small trivialities in our day to day life, if we have the main thing: life itself. 

We can be easily opened, pulled, turned inside out, torn apart and sticked together - but we aren't, we are amongst the living. Our body is constantly functioning to keep us alive, and well, and instead of being thankful for that and living according to this thankfulness for what we have, for having so many loved ones near us that too have survived this hostile world, that are so incredibly significant in ability to think, create, write a song or a poem - and most of all - love and be loved, we still dwell upon issues so fickle. 

Maybe we do not see this fragility, and that is why we obsess over these things. Or maybe it is because we do see this fragility that we seek with such ambition to be notorious, astounding, glorious and exceptional in skill, knowledge, beauty. We do not wish to be forgotten. But by seeking to not be forgotten by the world, maybe we fail to be remembered in a good way. Maybe we fail to be remembered in love, by those closest to us, preferring to be known by strangers than loved by close ones. How many times have I not left family, friends, loved ones aside for career, knowledge, recognition? To 'make a name', to be known? To get a better grade on a diploma that may very well never be looked at? 

What are we doing with our days? Are we doing with our days what we want our lives to be remembered for? Maybe we need to be reminded of our fragility, so that while it does not catch up on us, we can still correct our path and live with meaning more than ambition. 

"If blood will flow when flesh and steel are one
Drying in the colour of the evening sun
Tomorrow's rain will wash the stains away
But something in our minds will always stay
Perhaps this final act was meant
To clinch a lifetime's argument
That nothing comes from violence and nothing ever could
For all those born beneath an angry star
Lest we forget how fragile we are

On and on the rain will fall
Like tears from a star like tears from a star
On and on the rain will say
How fragile we are how fragile we are"
- Fragile, by Sting