Ephemeral

I think happiness in life is just a temporary feeling. Or maybe all feelings. Peace, love, elation, despair, fury. They are but fleeting moments of passion, like ripples across the pond. Like a wave crashing onto the shore. Like a flash of lightning or a gust of wind.

When you're in the moment, it feels like everything. It feels eternal. The smile painted across your face as you exchange affections with a loved one. That excitement you feel dancing in the crowd. Reaching the top of that mountain. Breaking that PR. Finishing that difficult project. Getting that good news.

It is all so temporary, like a high. It fills us and then deflates like a balloon with holes poked all through.

That anger, that moment of betrayal, when you finally see through the lie, when your final button has been pushed and you ask yourself if life itself is testing you, or maybe its god, or maybe people are just terrible to each other and life is at its most difficult and incomprehensible and you are at your limit.

It fills every fiber of your being, dominates you, consumes you like a fire. But all for just a moment, and then it passes.

That heartbreak, that loss, that loneliness and despair. It buries us in its deep water, drowning us. But the water recedes and eventually we break the surface of that turbulent ocean. It's that one gasp for air that we can take that fills us with hope and life. It's the reminder that even the toughest battles are beatable and that our limits are imagined. We can endure so much more than we think we can, because we are survivors by nature.

The universe has always been indifferent to our existence. Every day we continue living is an act of defiance in this endless cosmos almost entirely devoid of life. We live in spite of this cold and uncaring reality we inhabit.

Even though we know one day we'll meet that final end; our every breath, our tears, screams, and laughter is the ultimate rebellion and celebration of the beautiful chaos we call life.