The Poetry of Life

If I were to collect photographs and videos of my growing up, I’m sure I could build a better explanation for why I define myself the way I do. I could retrace memories with my fingers along worn picture frames. Maybe the lack of explanation for my being, the unnamed emotions that brought me to where I am alone is what defines me. I’m curious about the fall I chose not to play soccer, the time I missed my flight home from Costa Rica, and the people that came into my life as if on a jaunt who changed my perspectives. What could’ve been?
I opened a fading magazine from it’s spot in the sunlight in a rustic store in Mexico. It gleamed with many offers, but the best was it’s offer for me waste away the time until we could finish shopping, check out, say our last “buenas noches”. In the middle of my mindless time-killing, a glossy ad caught my eye. It showed the sunset across rough waters and a sandy beach-the orange in the sky flowing as if it was painted by a child’s watercolors-and taunted me: “This could be the best day of your life”. As I looked more closely at the ad I found that it could be the best day of my life IF I enjoyed a cruise on the clear water. Still, the ad spoke to me. The time I had spent inside the magazine’s faded cover seconds ago, I had happily viewed as “killed”, now fit the real, sad definition of the word; lost and gone. Time so quickly goes from present to gone, with the potential it continually offers me to have a great day, maybe the “best day”. Can we narrow all definitions of life down to one word, the common ground and familiar scarcity of time? It is all we really have.
I met a man when I was surfing recently and enjoyed arguing perspectives, sharing the differences in our lifestyles, and learning, despite all of our differences. While debating whether the East Coast or West Coast of the states was “better” (he was arguing the West Coast was, so I of course took my position on the contrary) he told me he noted people on the East Coast ask “What do you do for a living?” where people on the West Coast ask “What do you do to live? I wondered what an Oaklahomian would ask, while taking these questions into consideration. Both questions do imply one thing-life. That we are alive, living, and impacting the world we live in. How I live makes a difference. A difference to me of course, but regarding numbers, I am unimportant compared to all the other lives that benefit or perish from my choices, which is ultimately the answer to the question of how I live. Choice.
The wonder of choice scares me. Holds me back and weighs down on me while I let the wonder dominate my curiousity. Every day, I am expected to make a choice to wake up, get dressed, go to school, eat dinner, ect. And every day, there is the opportunity for more. There is always so much more. I learned about “more” when I learned spontaneity but it doesn’t happen that way for everyone. An indigenous Costa Rican man Miguel discovered “more” when he discovered money. He defined the word “more” the way many people do in Western culture. My friend Eric was born in a small town in Wales and “more” was plane tickets, bus rides, and more plane rides away in cultures new to him. “More” is like life and defined thousands of ways. Still, “more” is a decision. One I try to make daily to move forward and make choices that prevail to define the word for me.
Often when I make a choice, I expect and long for closure while I transition. When I asked Maddy what “life” is, she said “the game”. Pink and blue people moving in coloured cars at the spin of a wheel where you stop, but only to let another person go. Life is poetry, music, water-flowing without pause because it is more beautiful that way. The closure I longed for all year from home never happened because I decided definitely to go to Costa Rica five days before my plane took off and now it seems too late to say goodbye to home when I feel unsure where to even call “home” anymore. I know God did this for a reason to teach me about how open life is. When it feels like every door has slammed shut behind me after I walk through it, I can know it is only emotion coercing me into a form of nostalgia and second guessing because God says nothing is out of reach. Choice is opportunity and never closure. Someone noted to me once that when you ask a child if he/she can draw they will most likely reply with an enthusiastic “YES!” whereas a few years later as an adult they are more likely to reply “No.” Why? Is it us, scared we won’t be good enough, or is it society declaring we aren’t? My stick people may not resemble a real person’s dynamic face, but I think if God were peering over at my artwork, He would call it beautiful because it is my own perspective. If you ask 100 people to paint the same sunset, no one will look the same. The way every person defines our world is different because no perspective is the same. No one else can even see the exact same color blue as I do when they look at the water, we all see it the slightest bit differently. I see God sitting in heaven painting our varied beliefs, personalities, and view of the world to contrast like all the colors in that sunset to create peace in the beauty He sees.
God knows us so personally. He knows our every choice, and every way we differ from each other. We are His own masterpieces and I love to picture Him smiling down on us daily as we interact. The more I look for it I see God is romanticizing about us, and writing our stories down in His language. We are more than just names or words because we have a purpose and it’s so abstract. We are His poetry.