“I don’t think that there are any limits to how excellent we could make life seem.
— Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated
Sometimes
I wonder
whether
no matter
how
heartfelt
my words
they are lies
simply
because
of
what
they
do
not
not
say.
My mission
is to to find
truth in beauty
and
beauty in truth.
But
sometimes
the truth is
not
at
all
beautiful.
It is ugly
from
all angles.
Rose-coloured glasses
just
make
the blood
more
red.
As I write
about
#firstworldproblems
swirling
in my own mind,
injustice
unfairness
oppression
and war
is
swirling
in my own world.
The elderly dying alone
The children starving
The families torn apart by
The loss
The grief
The corruption
The violence
Does the wretched reality
of their lives
render
my hopelessly futile thoughts,
my search for
beauty
and
fulfilment,
worthless?
I feel for them,
I try
to imagine
their unfathomable pain,
that could be mine.
But it is not
enough.
Is it?
I cannot touch them.
I cannot change
the world
for the better.
All I have is a conscience
and a keyboard
and a tiny platform
a silent megaphone
words
floating
in a virtual
bubble
flowing from my thoughts
to my fingers
to the screen
into the stratosphere
for people to read
hate
love
judge
absorb
ridicule
live
kill
burst.
We all have stories
and mine
is one of
privilege
and
triviality
and
lyricism
and
omission
but it is still
a story.
Isn't it?
The world is
big
and
small
in equal measure.
We sit
as
tiny
specs
of dust
beneath
the same stars
and
wonder
why.
I wonder why.
Why?
"It was curious to think that the sky was the same for everybody, in Eurasia or Eastasia as well as here. And the people under the sky were also very much the same—everywhere, all over the world, hundreds or thousands of millions of people just like this, people ignorant of one another’s existence, held apart by walls of hatred and lies, and yet almost exactly the same—people who had never learned to think but were storing up in their hearts and bellies and muscles the power that would one day overturn the world."
— George Orwell, 1984
These paintings of a Starry Night were created by Vincent Van Gogh and Alex Ruiz, respectively.
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