Tag: hope

“Tell me the truth,” the human demanded.

The universe rippled, almost like a smile. “I grant you permission to ask any question, and this is what you want to know?”

The human glared a little bit. “Tell me. Unless you’re breaking your promise,”

“Of course not,” said the universe. It pulled the human closer, made the space around it warm, slowed time into a gentle river.

“Well? What’s the truth of if all? The one thing that’s always true, no matter what?”

The universe held its human for a long or short while. Then, it said:
“There’s no always.”

“Okay,” said the human slowly, “okay, but – ”

“The only truth is change.”

For a tiny or an endless while, the human said nothing. When it looked up at the universe, its eyes were shining with tears (maybe happy ones, maybe sad ones; the universe couldn’t be sure. Nothing was certain with humans, and how magnificent that was).

“So even if – no matter what – ” The human couldn’t speak anything else. It curled against the universe and held on tight.

A pulse of light wove around the human as it dissolved. The universe watched its way back to the stars, back to its home, and whispered a little something after it for when it woke up again.

Indeed, my human… you’re right. No matter what, even if something and anything happens, change is true, and truth will always come.

There will always be something left to discover. So don’t worry. It’s terrible and breathtaking and sometimes it shatters me into pieces, the knowledge that we’ll never know it all. We struggle and ask and build theory after theory, but no ancestry of human lives is enough to learn the secrets of our world.

But then again:

There is always something more.

Because there will always be something left.

You thought you couldn’t live without them. But the day came, and your heart went into pieces. Maybe in silence, maybe with a whisper or the wail of a storm crushing your ribs and veins. There you were. There you lay.

Hello, how have you been since then?

They sure did leave some wounds in you, didn’t they. Let me see. Oh. Oh? That’s quite different now. Tell me, tell all of us – aren’t you alive?

The scars are still there. Nothing to fear, no shame to be found in them. But look beneath. Watch what you did below.

You filled the emptiness that they left, and what you poured in was yourself. You. Your mind and heart and the ever-growing swell of your soul that you thought wouldn’t ever recover.

You’re surely not smooth. Don’t have a flawless surface or boring, dull evenness characterising your presence. 

“So full of themselves, that one over there,” the world says when they look at you. Yes, that you are. Nothing in the universe is better to fill your existence with than yourself.

i can never know everything. there’s always something out of reach, something hidden, something buried, something so breathtaking in uniqueness, and it hurts me. species have passed without an eye to see them, colours and scents and the feeling of extinct air faded away like they meant nothing. it breaks my soul apart. don’t even think about the universe, the curious fingertips of our galaxy feeling into the darkness to search for more of infinity. don’t think about our solar system, the stars’ dying light touching our hair or the millions of years-things-lives before us and away from us. the lost history of earth is enough to slither sorrow into my bones. i bow my head. i weep for what i and you and the future will never know.

i can never know everything. there’s always something out of reach, something hidden, something buried, something so breathtaking in its uniqueness, and it gives me hope. there’s growth. life changes, and the change lives in everything. nothing lasts forever, they say, and look up to the night sky to remember the moon before one day, their children’s children ask about the history of the silver firmament where the mighty ocean obeyed the glint of something further away then the new continents. it breaks my soul apart that we will never run out of secrets and discoveries. i’m not afraid that there will come a time when the shiver of new words and mysteries settling into your mind through the pages of a book or a whispered tale or fingers drawing in the mud is unknown to humanity. history doesn’t run out of ink. it may change the font and go from black to blue or emerald, but the new chapters will always, always come out.

there are locked chests and hidden waterfalls, tree houses and underwater trenches and bird nests and old books. there are first steps and a new touch of fingers against yours and a million ways of getting out of bed so you can stand up to the sunrise and whisper: today, i want to hear a new story.

i lift my head. there is no need to cry.
we can never know everything.

because curiosity did not kill the cat but made a key instead