Who Are You?

June 22, 2014

No other question can seize the confidence from the heart of man so quickly as this one. 

It seems so simplistic in nature, but it's not.  People are neither black nor white; we're a grey bunch, an amalgamation of ever-changing parts. 

We're byproducts of our environment, our opportunities, our challenges and our experiences.  We are not good or evil.  We are both and we are neither. 

We're complicated little messes that bounce around, trying to find some unspeakable peace, some final destination of contentment that we neither know nor can place into words.  We just know that we need to get there, instincitvely, the same way a baby knows to nurse on its mother's breast. 

We just know.

So we move throughout the battlefield, brushing against others, inflicting harm, collecting blisters, scars...

We finally reach this nirvana alone, bloodied and smiling.  We are battered, but we always travel alone.  We enter alone.  We wander alone.  And we arrive alone.

All we can hope to do in the meantime is to spread a little love, a little hope, into the lives and hearts of those who mean something to us. 

Who are you? 

The answer makes us tremble because it's so complexly profound: where do we begin to answer?  Our answer will not be the same from one day to the next.  This makes time, its echo ticking softly in the distance, that you can just barely hear if you stop for a moment and stand quietly, even more precious.

We are heroes.  We are failures.  We are liars.  We are saviors.  We are loving and we are cruel.  We are passionate.  We are uncaring. 

We are smiling, sinning, fallen angels...

We are human.

~ Angela Darling

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