O Me! O Life!

It's been quite some time since I last wrote on this bloggy thingy.

I have in the many days since I began writing this blog heard from many people that they dislike blogs. When I ask them why, most of the time I get an answer about who-cares-about-your-life-or-your-opinions-enough-to-read-them or something of that sort. This is perfectly valid. I don't write as though I expect people to care about my thoughts or opinions. But this does beg the question; why does anyone write?

In asking this question, the responses (as one would imagine) vary greatly. Some write because it helps them. Some write because it helps others. Some write to educate others. Some write just to prove that they think.

The way I see it, we all want to prove that we exist at all. Look at some of the pictures on the walls at your grandmother's house. Save the age of the photos and the perhaps less-than-desiring clothing options they exhibited, how are those people any different from the ones on your facebook homepage?

They're not.

The people in those pictures all have smiles on their faces, frozen in an instant on an infinite timeline. The people in those pictures all have something or someone on their minds at that moment, things they have to do tomorrow or the next day, a person they wronged that day, a worry, a day they are looking forward to, a moment that they are dreading in the future. The difference is this: they are now old, or even no longer on this earth at all.

So what did they leave behind? What did they teach the world? Anything? Nothing?

It is out of both the selfish need to last forever and the overwhelming responsibility to pass on whatever we can to posterity that we write.

I write, just as those before me have, to show that no matter what befalls you, no matter what you think you can never overcome, someone has done it, seen it, lived it before. I write to prove we're not crazy. Mistakes are made, and the sun still rises. Love comes, it is amazing, and it dies, and it is the worst pain you will ever feel. The funny thing is, we've been writing for thousands of years, and feeling the same feelings. You'd think we would run out of things to say. Why haven't we? Because everyone sees it his or her own way. So next time you feel something, hear something, think something, anything...write it down.

One of the best examples of why you should is from the great Walt Whitman. Read this, think about it....then contribute your own verse. :) -Que Dios Les Bendiga (God Bless)

--O ME! O life!... of the questions of these recurring;
Of the endless trains of the faithless—of cities fill’d with the foolish;
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light—of the objects mean—of the struggle ever renew’d;
Of the poor results of all—of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me;	5
Of the empty and useless years of the rest—with the rest me intertwined;
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?
Answer. That you are here—that life exists, and identity;
That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.

-Walt Whitman


Night world. -Matt