Do You Want To Be Alive?

Can I ask you a question?

Do you want to be alive?

What?

Crush.

Walk outside and feel the sun glowing against your skin, the air grazing your neck, the cool soil crumbling beneath your feet.

And then witness innocent children being beat, traumatized, and existentially enslaved.

Do you want to be alive?

Feel the embrace of your girlfriend who loves you, her soft skin reminding you that you are undoubtedly alive.

And then witness the genocide of dreaming people, their girlfriends left abandoned in a world that wants them dead.

Can I ask you a question?

Do you want to be alive?

Sit on the soft sand at the beach, the air rushing past your neck, the waves crashing rhythmically against the shore.

And then witness the ocean being poisoned, animals suffocating on plastic, in the name of corporate interests.

Do you want to be alive?

Eat dinner with your family on Thanksgiving, laughing and smiling while sharing food with another.

And then realize that millions of trembling souls are achingly, blazingly alone at their dinner table.

Can I ask you a question?

Do you want to be alive?

Before you realize, you will die. And your story turned to dust and blown away in the wind of time. Everything you have loved, could love, and would love, turned to ash.

Can I ask you a question?

Do you want to be alive?

What?

Can we find hope in a hopeless world? Where would it come from? Why do we always struggle upwards?

Some people do not.

For those who do, it is beyond reason.

Despair, hope.

Death, life.

Crush.