Everything and Nothing, All At Once

One day, we are born.

Someday, we die.

You know how the saying goes.

People tend to think that, one day, our souls

Find themselves nowhere.

Not even under velvet-black skies

Dusted with the sparkle of primordial, billion year, stars,

Bound to twinkle upon our untimely demise.

We found that they do not burn for us.

Quite the opposite, really.

Glowing, incandescent lights

Named human names, like Sirius, Regulus, Canopus

Belonged in a dark sea, with no other reason

But to be.

I pondered upon our existence, then.

I wondered if anything really mattered.

I found myself being unbothered.

I convinced myself it was wrong to question the ways of the universe so.

And yet.

I wondered how people thought of nihilism with woe.

Measuring their sorry minutes in misery,

Knowing they’d be doomed and that one day,

The cold remains of the universe would be scattered to and fro

Upon a graveyard of decaying rays

’Neath a dying sun

I saw the weight of the universe in their sorry eyes,

Of those who saw it fit to stop trying,

For who would find it wise to recognize

Beauty in a world thought to be dying?

Yes, nihilism in itself states

That perhaps nothing does matter.

That all eight billion lives here on earth garnered

Little to no meaning

With nowhere else to call home but the remnants of what was once nothing

And will go back to being nothing.

But then

If nothing matters,

Don’t we, as humans, get to decide what does?

Maybe nothing to me meant the hazy outline of my mom kissing me goodnight.

Maybe nothing to me was the burst of warm colors under a setting sky,

A popsicle in my hand and the warmth of summer in my little sister’s eyes.

If nothing mattered, then I could choose that these were everything.

Why does the thought of becoming insignificant have to be so dull, anyway?

Doesn’t knowing that we’ll all disappear completely someday

Push us to see the fleeting beauty of the everyday?

Maybe that’s what humanity is made up of.

A billion little things that some people said were nothing,

But could be everything

If they knew how to be appreciative in the way

A person who is optimistically nihilistic finds themselves being.