On the Meaning of Life

What is the meaning of life?

This is a question directed at you. In another way, this may be asked:
HOW DO YOU GIVE MEANING TO YOUR LIFE?

You learned in your English class that to define something, you have to consider the following:

1. Physical characteristics – color, texture, smell, sound, taste
2. Purposes or functions
3. Examples
4. Strengths and advantages
5. Weaknesses and disadvantages
6. Opportunities
7. Threats
8. Limitations

These are the framework and fundamentals of your life. Some of these are just accidents which may be natural or self-inflicted.

You fill in the blanks in your life to get to your destiny and to understand fully its meaning.

The journey, according to Paulo Coelho in his book The Alchemist, allows you the wisdom of experience that makes your discovery of your treasure at your backyard more meaningful and life-defining.

You have to allow yourself some failures. Perfection happens after the rain and the storm – when there is calm and the beauty of the rainbow soothes your strained spirit and seemingly irreparable soul.

The journey also makes way to self-discovery – how you measure up to the challenges of the moment and how you sum up the addends of the previous fights. You fight a good fight you don’t lose. You are the victor of every fight when you can, with dignity, make either defeat or victory define you.

Remember that when you lose, another warrior becomes the victor. It then becomes your destiny whether his victory is one for the books or one to be mocked about.

You win for the victor the applause he deserves. The victor wins for the loss you can be proud of. This we know because warriors attract their match.


(Insights taken from the interview with Paulo Coelho at Glasgow in September 2007.)

Lessons in the Bin

yesterday i flung all of life's lessons into the bin.

i destroyed the cloak of experience and wore nothing but the truth, naked as it has always been described.

i closed my eyes, took a harrowing breath and knocked at your door.

i did not prepare a speech. i did not come prepared at all. no smart moves. no cotton candy smiles. no baby breaths.

i only had a lousy line that said "..."

and i was happy. and i didn't care what other women would say or think about this girl who was once already a woman.

I Quit

Do you know what makes things sadder than they are? Proximity.

I have suffered four years being away by several time zones from the one for whom I have allowed my life to be put on hold. And I can't start to explain how painful it was, how I cried when I saw him reduced to a mere computer monitor. And I'd touch the surface of the screen, instead of his warm, smooth skin. And countless were the times I would do anything to fly to him. But then, where I was concerned, only dreams could grow wings.

And I thought that was the most difficult part of being me. Until.

Every day, we take the same path home. Except that we go the opposite ends. Every day, we take the same stretch of road. Our eyes gaze at the same horizon. We breathe in the same square kilometer of air. And I can easily run to you and not lose oxygen.

But I am over waiting. With him I waited for the distance to close. With you I’m waiting until I lose interest. Which doesn’t seem to happen. So I quit.

To Myself the Day After the End of the World

What did I tell you about yesterday?
Today is another day.
Today makes your worries of 24 hours ago things of the past.
(Yeah, cliché, so what? Isn’t life one great rhetorical routine?)

Did you end up in the evening news?
Did you die?
Were you annihilated? No.
Did your hurt lead you to numbness?

Or the opposite?

Aren't you happier now?
Doesn't the morrow look more promising today?
Don't the clothes fit perfectly again?
Your hair, the most beautiful?

You needed yesterday's darkness to see fireflies in the night.
You needed the tears to buy back the smile you pawned for a second's madness.

Do you still breathe?
Does it still hurt?
Do you still wait for the one who has given you up for something you're not?

You enjoy shopping and you go to the malls
for clothes and shoes worship. You don’t have to quit shopping now.
You are not done buying things for yourself.
But this time you don't use currencies.
You spend your life by either living or wasting one day out of it.

Move on by living your life one doomsday at a time.

To Myself On the Day the World Would End

You are going to make it through this day.
This day will pass too, like the other days.
It may be longer this time,
but it will end because the sun has to set later,
and the late night news has to broadcast.

Chances are your situation isn’t all that bad
for you to end up in the evening news.
It is just pain.
It is just the inability to breathe properly
without tears.
It is just voices in your head asking questions
to which you have no answers. Yet.
It is just you hurting now.
And when this day is over,
we will know if the hurt will turn to numbness,
or death.

Today will be over. Rest on that truth.
(The truth is a soft pillow. But it can also be stone hard. Take your pick.)

Don’t Go Out Alone Into The Night

Baby,

We understand your need to see the world,
to know what it is out there.
We can tell you what they are,
what they mean,
what's beneath them,
but of course,
you wouldn't take the lessons from us –
you want to learn first hand.

Quite a few times you heard must-not-be-heard words from us
and you'd almost always cry,
but instead of showing us the brave tears
you'd go out into the night in your bike
returning only when the lights were out.

We never liked any of the girls
you introduced as your girlfriend.
Either they don't have the bearing
and refinement of our little sister
or they lack the intelligence I’d hope they possess.

But you're your own man.
we will give you that, but –
please, don't go out alone into the night.

Stop! Poetry

Why don’t we stop reading poetry
then maybe we can see the real poetry
of life twice removed each time a poet
attempts to cramp life into still words
for readers to inanimate?

Second-hand imagination when
put on paper is paper cup
in the King’s banquet

;
an ethical hacker
behind the firewall
at the break of the code.

What Were You Thinking, Calling Yourself Stupid?

you did the right thing. and if now you feel a little regretful, in doubt if all your sleepless nights had been worth all the wakefulness when you ached thinking, second-guessing what he wasn't doing -- that, dear me, is part of your healing.

didn't it feel wonderful walking, and you not thinking? only the rise and fall of the pavement told you where you were. wasn't it exhilarating just breathing in the air, while you choked back the tears you thought were coming? and then you changed your mind because suddenly you remembered you're done crying over some-flawless-man-off-in-the-distance-and-when-he-moved-closer-you-knew-he-wouldn't-do-at-all years ago. (oh, dear sylvia!)

be glad that you have helped an individual realize that he cannot always be at the receiving end.

find bliss in the thought that he will never meet another one like you no matter how many lives he lives.

still, wasn't it a lot better walking than waiting for him to agree to an eye operation for the non-blinds?