Musings of a Part-Time Platypus

It's always been a tough world. It's difficult. People make it look easy all the time, but under all of it...it's difficult. We're born without a purpose, and then we follow a path we likely cannot trust...all for what? We chase education, jobs, money, happiness, relationships, Maslow's whole Hierarchy. In an endless pursuit, generations live on. But the beautiful thing about people is that we have hope. The world is a mess right now, and I feel compelled to address this matter. Every day, thousands new cases of the novel coronavirus–the COVID-19–are diagnosed. And every day, our planet quite possibly becomes a riskier place to exist in. This force of nature appears to be inescapable, reaching every corner of the world, every continent except for Antarctica. (Too bad there isn't enough room for all of us in the South Pole. Besides, it's improbably that enough winter clothing manufacturers will still be operating.) It's a global pandemic. B...

We fight, despite having lost a thousand battles. We plow through these mountains, the faintest glimmer of hope driving us. Despite the tug of waves of quicksand that rises to pull us under, we thrash, flail our arms. Though our minds are quiet and we pull down a black screen, shutting ourselves out from sinking, drowning–our bodies refuse to give up. Because we cannot hold our heads underwater for longer than we want to. We tilt upward, gasping for oxygen and sun and air and the freedom that came before the straitjacket of quicksand and burdens and the prisons we locked ourselves within, and will not escape from. Even though we have the key in our hands. We lose the willpower to say "no" when "no" is needed. To lift ourselves up and to hover over the world to gaze at the bigger picture. It appears that we fight. It appears that we keep on going, and we are whole and not broken. It appears that we have enough energy to power a jet for the rest of our liv...