By Nicola Rakuljic
Editor in Chief
The birds chirp sweetly in the trees, calling for each other, their song the same as always. Like a sigh when you drop your body into bed. Like the feeling of wind against your face. Like the sun sending its ray down, 8 minutes delayed, a present phantom of light and warmth. Like shivering in the cold, burning in the heat, and ignoring it all because you are safe.
Like the churning of your stomach whenever you turn on the news. Whenever you look outside and wonder about all those in the world, the odd 2 million souls, who are fighting, and the ones who are losing.
Tomorrow is merely a word. Adverb, noun, ‘(on) the day after today’. It will never come. It always changes, at some point, into today. And then it’ll change into yesterday, then once again in before. There is no tomorrow.
If there’s no tomorrow, how is there a today? How can we live if all we are living for doesn’t exist in the great expanse of time? Time goes on and on, without us and with us and before us and after us. What we do, what we say, what we think, doesn’t exist tomorrow, because tomorrow doesn’t exist.
So why should we keep going? / So why shouldn’t we keep going?
There is only today. Raise your head, you are alive. You are standing, proud and tall like redwoods, looking down upon the land we walk upon, the people we meet, and seeing that it is real. It is alive, you are alive.
We must keep living.
For the almost 300,000 who have lost, we must keep winning. For those who are still fighting, we are their support. For those halfway across the world crying at night, we are awake in the daytime, taking their fears and worries and doubts and burning them in the fire of the sun that continues to provide for us. We have survived far smaller and far greater bumps in the road, and we will continue.
Because we may get knocked off the path, but we will build a new one.
And we will mourn and cry and tear ourselves apart at the endless possibilities before we recognise that there are endless possibilities.
So when they look back, they will see us proud and strong, a family unending.
Helpless and helpful, divided amongst the world yet together in spirit and life.
We live in interesting times: make the most of it, because this is life. It waits for no one.