Tag: writing

The stories you read change you once, but the stories you have written, those you write here and now, the others you will write one day, they change you at every crossroad. Our words will guide us. They already do.

Being human, we’re small. We haven’t been here for very long, neither as our kind nor every single one of us. I like to think that the ancient parts of the world watch us, silent and unmoved above our heads and underneath our feets, and whisper to each other.

We may steal a glance at their shapes, be it buildings or oceans, a forest grown through centuries or the wind brushing through our hair, and we wonder what they have seen and done in their almost immortal lives.

Admiring them with deep reverence, we may forget something – that they too watch us.

And I like to think that even the oldest parts of our planets occasionally turn their senses onto us little humans, if only to wonder how something so tiny can still surprise them after all these eternities.

Don’t let them starve your curiosity. Ask your questions, and when they refuse you the answers, do one of two things: Demand or search. There are too many mysteries, too many hidden stories for you to close your mind and pretend you wouldn’t like to know what lies on the bottom of the ocean or why humans cry or how cats always land on their feet. How many languages did ever exist? What if the dinosaurs hadn’t died out? Can we ever protect one without hurting another? Ask.

Humanity never got anywhere without being a nuisance about things we don’t understand.

And deep down, you know it as surely and certainly as the moon orbit the planet that brought you into existence:
You are desperate to learn. You’d do anything to understand. There’s no path you wouldn’t walk, no ocean you wouldn’t cross to study the whispers of flaring energy between stars or the growl-told stories of evolution shining from the eyes of an apex predator.
Everything inside you screams for another glimpse inside the universe. Through the ribcage, behind matter and light, you yearn for an explanation of it all.
So be desperate. Be stunned. Stand in awe and full of questions so that you always find a spark of curiosity even when the world tries to fill you with darkness.
You’re an explorer.
You’re here to learn.

to you. to her. to him. to anyone who’s afraid of the dark tonight.

And watch out for travellers, my child. People on a journey are a force of nature. A goal that used to be a dream does unbelievable things to someone. So if you meet a man with fire in his eyes, a woman with embers in her step, take care.

They may just move you into your own journey.

“you’re destroying yourself,” he told her. she didn’t reply. “you can’t live for just your mind and nothing else. you’re human, for god’s sake. you need love, affection, you need all the things that all of us need. please. you’re destroying yourself.”

she didn’t look at him. her fingers turned the page. her eyes read. her lashes flickered shut, just a second, before she drank the words on the paper. more information. more data. all the connections and causes the world had to offer.

he reached for her, touched her shoulder. “please,” now he was begging, “you’re not a machine.”

“but I wish I was.”

“you can’t be.” he spoke gently now, hope rising up. maybe he could reach her. “you don’t have to be. it’s okay not to know things. sometimes there are no answers, or a problem that even you can’t solve. there are things bigger than any of us, and you can’t do anything to understand them.”

she froze under his touch. 

he let go. he took a breath. “it will be okay. you’ll get used to it. come on.”

“no,” she said.

he opened his mouth. she turned to him, and the shine of her eyes spoke not of life as it used to, not of curiosity nor the yearning for knowledge that had made her the most brilliant creature he’d ever seen.

“who are you?” he whispered it, stumbling, terror in his voice. she was brilliant still, and it had made her – 

“i am my mind.” she didn’t blink anymore. her fingers were curled around the book, a page crumpled up under her palm. “i was nothing before i could think like this. before i knew. before i could connect all the information, make nets and theories and new ways. don’t you see?” her smile spread over her lips, hesitating then, shying away from her wide black pupils. 

he pressed his back to the wall. his body trembled. “you are more than this.”

“no!” she hissed. her fist crashed into the book, tears springing to her eyes. “you don’t understand, stupid, stupid! my mind could be perfect! it could be brilliant, better than anyone, it could make me special. it could make me more than just another…”

“human?” her swallowed. moved. came closer, just a step. “you don’t want to be human?”

“no. yes. I want…” 

“it’s okay. you don’t have to be extraordinary, you know? it’s alright to be enough-”

“I want to be more.”

he took all the courage he had and went back to her. when he stood in front of her, silent, she touched her fingers to his chest.

“if you’re not brilliant, you’ll be forgotten.”

her fingers curled into a fist.

“I’d rather be remembered than human.”

Curiosity has killed, and it will kill again. It makes mistakes. It drives us into making mistakes. It can be the most terrible of mistakes. It errs. It fails. It destroys.

Curiosity is imperfect. And yet.

Curiosity is worth all of that after you witness what losing it does to a human life.

not being beautiful is a relief. no ‘so pretty’ by family or friends, no ‘you’re so gorgeous’ by strangers or lovestruck acquaintances. nothing. I am nothing.

with a face and body so unremarkable, so average that neither breath is taken away nor lips pull up in disgust, so utterly ignored after one glance of recognition, I am invisible. I am not there.

until they are introduced to my mind, I am a blank slate. I am nobody.

when I speak, I become. when I create, I exist. when my shell is ignored and my ideas materialise into language, sound, ink, only then am I alive.

I have no beauty. I have a mind.