Vernon Witmer | + Follow Poet |
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Being Human

What is it that makes a feeling? Why are some words soothing? We have heard poets, in lyrical ways, describing the delights of stars or waterfalls or rainbows. They awaken in us the wonder of our feelings. How mesmerized we were the first time we saw such miracles. But miracles are all around us all the time. When viewed for the first time, everything is a miracle. Why not the second or third? 
     We become jaded with our understanding of things. We lose our wonder as things evolve from the mysterious to the commonplace. Many well-meaning people; parents, teachers, friends, think they are “helping” us by changing us into themselves, replacing our miraculous feelings with ordinary understanding. Does knowing about photosynthesis make the leaf less beautiful? Does knowing how a mineral is made under volcanic pressure make the lava less intriguing? When do we leave our wonder behind and “grow up”? 
     When is a brick no longer something to be marveled at; but just a brick. After all, how it is manufactured can be explained: from the composition of clay to the color of its bake. 
The process can be explained step by step until the brick is taught. We know what it is. We know how it was made, laid, and painted or sprayed. We can move on to another nugget of knowledge,  But what cannot be taught is how we experience the brick. This is what we leave behind. Not its source or composition or the wheres or how-to’s; not the ability to produce or reproduce, or buy, sell, or use a brick.
     We know of the brick what we are taught and so it becomes uninteresting. But can we know what bricks mean to the men who touched them, made them, used them to build a church or orphanage? Can we know their meaning to the family of a brother or son who was lost to an act of vandalism. Displaying graffiti on bricks; revealing pain, or creating for us the visual torture of not having your voice heard? What drives one to write on bricks, destroy bricks, or use them as a weapon? 
     Do we recognize the brick's different surfaces when they are felt by the fingers of a child; rough or smooth; or their color, as it changes with sunlight or shade from shiny to dull, or how the shadows fall upon them at different times of day? Why they are painted, or not, and the memories made or gathered in their presence that will stay with us forever, marking, not just the bricks, but places, times, events; and pain or pleasure. 
     What is a brick anyway? A weapon?, a favorite resting place?, the place we scraped our skin or wiped our shoes before entering?, is it the color of our home?, When we open our eyes to let our tears escape, will they come to rest upon a brick?
     What do we know of anything, except what we have painted with a memory or named with our soul. Is each thing, like the brick, just a thing?  Or is each thing a miracle? The difference lies in our feelings. We bring to each thing, only ourselves. Each thing is then, an expression of ourself.
     We must Love each thing, not for what it is, but for who we are. For we are, as all things, a part of God and, therefore, by extension, every thing in the Universe has inside of it, a part of us.

Make yourself this promise every day, 
To live as neither, predator nor prey;
But rise to stand, and live as if, 
You were a Human Being.

Copyright © Vernon Witmer | Year Posted 2020

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