Sunday, November 29, 2015

The Purpose of Your Life [Poem]

The Purpose of Your Life 


The purpose of your life 
cannot
simply cannot 
be survival. 
Why? 
Because your quest for survival is doomed. 
No matter what, you are going to die. 
These things may or may not be real: 
Financial Security 
Everlasting Happiness 
True Contentment
But you can be certain that death is real. 
Overwhelmingly real. 
Self-preservation
(the most common of pursuits)
will always end in 
failure. 

Everyone and everything
No matter how much we cherish 
No matter how much we enshrine
No matter how much we fight
will be
hurt
humiliated
before
perishing
and then being
forgotten. 

But I know that even though no one has ever survived

I know that people have been good. 
That goal
is more achievable:
Even though they died as anyone else, 
they still bestowed
soul-smiles
heart-healings 
tenderness-times
and that is enough. 
That goal
is more permanent: 
Every act of goodness is eternal.
Do you not feel the ripples of loving-kindness, 
flowing across time to wash over you?

When death comes to devour you, 
fight him unrelenting tenacity,
just to reveal your strength of character,
so that he can know what measure of man he is taking today:
Not someone whose body outlived their soul, 
but someone who loved life and will miss it and be missed by it. 
Someone who knew that the only true defeat is giving up, 
and the only true victory is to keep fighting, 
someone who audaciously laughs at death, whispering:
“I won!”








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