I think it’s inaccurate to say that I have lived. Like animals, insects and plants, I have existed, but I have never once lived. In the past, if you had asked me, I would have told you that life is the condition of having living cells. Cold and scientific, to be sure. Like a logical robot with some instinctual and emotional programming thrown in. Now, I’ll tell you that you haven’t lived until you’ve realized you were once part of the living dead. Indeed, for nineteen years of existence, I was a zombie.
Every creature is born into simple and pointless existence, but only humans have the potential to transcend it. Whether doing so is meaningful or meaningless is a point of contention. After all, don’t pointless things have a place, too, in this far-from perfect world?
“Remove everything pointless from an imperfect life, and it’d lose even its imperfection.”
In 2006, instead of living, I watched as others lived. I straddled the twilight between life and existence. I saw insignificance in homogeneity.
These are the kinds of ideas I had running through my head last year.
photographer unknown
Forest Fire, photographer unknown
Danae, by Floriana Barbu
