Life And The Human Condition
Life came to me not as a hymn
but as a question asked by mud and breath.
I woke among others—
each with a hunger, each with a name—
and learned at once that meaning
does not announce itself with trumpets.
We labor, thinking labor is virtue.
We acquire, thinking possession is safety.
We love, thinking love will not be taken.
Yet the earth receives the peasant and the king
with the same patience,
and the grave is indifferent to titles.
I watched men build laws as if they were ladders to heaven,
then strike one another over who may climb first.
I watched priests bless swords
and merchants baptize greed with necessity.
All the while, the child asked no philosophy—
only bread, warmth, and to be held.
Suffering is not a punishment;
it is a teacher that never lies.
It strips us of the illusion
that we stand alone or above.
Only when pain humbles us
do we begin to recognize the faces of others as mirrors.
To live rightly is not to conquer life
but to consent to it—
to refuse falsehood even when it profits us,
to choose compassion even when it costs us,
to see that no man is saved by another’s chains.
In the quiet moments—
when ambition sleeps and fear loosens its grip—
truth speaks plainly:
Life is brief, love is required,
and the only freedom worth keeping
is the one that frees everyone else as well.
Then death, when it comes,
will not be an enemy
but the final proof
that we were never meant to own life—
only to answer it honestly.
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