Poems of Life
My discoveries in just the little time I have spent on Earth.
When I was young, I used to make up my own stories with movie characters. At some point, I even started creating my own characters. I thought I was going to write my own book, probably a comic, and maybe I still will one day. I’d spend nights when I couldn’t sleep making these cool stories.
As I grew older, I started thinking more about real things. I started thinking about life. I was probably in love with feeling wise. Maybe I was wise enough for my age. Who knows? I know I wasn’t wise enough for the life I hope to live, though. Maybe the problem was I was mostly in school (boarding school).
After high school, I got to go out more. It was only then I started seeing more about what life truly is. People sleeping on the roads. Kids begging passengers, and the passengers ignoring them. These things made me think more about what life truly is. Then, I got to experience a bit of this myself when I went to a public school for a year. It is probably the best thing to happen to me because I saw what others face.
For a final project in one of my classes in my first semester in the U.S., I was able to write poems that showed some of my discoveries.
The first was about the meaning of life:
Life
Does life really have a meaning? I thought. Everyone dies and goes to the other world. Even some legends are now hardly spoken of. Why, then, do people do so much to make their names remembered? What is so great about that? Is it the illusion that made kings give up their soldiers’ lives for wars that needed not happen just to have victory? Or the greed of men that made them kill mothers and children just for gold? In the end, we all die, and everything goes. Some of those “great” kings who believed they’d never be forgotten are no longer remembered. What, truly, is the point of living? I think I have found the answer. Life may not mean anything, but children are homeless without food or parents. They suffer! The only way life can have meaning is if we use it to help others. Helping one person creates a ripple effect. Then, wouldn’t life have some meaning? Wouldn’t there be pride in living? Ask yourself, does life really have a meaning?
I also thought of adulthood: its difficulties. I wrote about the fact that some people never even really experience childhood.
I am not good at picking titles, but I think it (“Adulthood”) covers the point of the poem:
Adulthood
Childhood, of course, was really liberating except we didn’t know it was. We thought that was life, full of fun, friends, and nature’s creativity. Fireflies, butterflies, ocean waves: they all mesmerized us. They really were good days until we grew older and discovered what life was: Adulthood, competing against everything, not knowing what is and what isn’t. Not knowing whether we’re ready or not. It’s good we had childhood; some didn’t. They had to be adults from birth, so they never even got to taste liberty. Now, those same fireflies mean nothing to us. We’d even kill them for no reason at all. What changed? Did we really grow, or did the troubles of adulthood make us become younger? As adults, we probably do even more wrong things than children, fueled by rage and troubles. Is Adulthood really bigger than Childhood? We may never know? After all, there are a few who can control adulthood and even become better people. But isn’t it just a few?
Finally, I thought of power. Many of the troubles the world has is because of a quest for power. This craving has made men blind.
It’s funny. There are probably just a few people that know what true power is.
Power and Authority
Humans want power so much, but very few even know what it is. Some think power means to control people to their will; others think it means to have the technology to destroy people. In the end, no matter how pure you think your intentions for wanting power are, they’re never true. No human deserves power. True power is deciding who lives and who dies. No matter how resourced a person is, he can and should never have that. What some think of is authority. If what a person wants is authority, the person doesn’t deserve it. If what a person needs is pure and requires authority, the person will get it if he works enough. Some think they have authority, but all they have is the fear of people or the resources to cause danger. Authority gives respect, fear, and love; one doesn’t need all the technology or resources. Power belongs to GOD alone. Authority is given to worthy men.
These are just some of my thoughts about life.
Do I think I am wise now? Maybe I am. I’ll find out, but these things I have said probably do not need wisdom to be known; it just needs willingness to open one’s mind.
I think these are things we need to understand, so we can all know that we have a big role to play on this planet, and so our eyes can really be opened.