What Will Your Verse Be?

In a hundred years, everyone currently on this planet will be dead. We'll all be gone, replaced by smarter, more technologically inclined children and grandchildren. This is a very frightening thing to think about. The future of this planet is in our hands, and we can choose to positively or negatively influence it. Like a ripple effect, our actions will culminate and decide the course of future history.

A quote by Chuck Palahniuk got me thinking about this.

"We all die. The goal isn't to live forever, the goal is to create something that will."

As a teenager, it's all we hear our parents talking about. "You have to stay in school and do well and go to college so you'll get a good job." Make good grades. Do better. Be better. It's a constant pressure that is put on us as teenagers. But it's so much more than that.

It's my belief that we aren't put on this planet to go to school, go to college, get a decent job, retire, and then die. To succeed and grow we must create and give someone in the future the chance to learn from our own struggles.

A quote from the movie "Dead Poet's Society" reflects on this--well, more so on the subject of creating poetry.

"We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, "O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?" Answer. That you are here - that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play *goes on* and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?"

This quote inspires me every time I read it. I try to ask myself this everyday --"What is my verse?" What am I contributing to this world, not just as everyone else is doing, but as an individual, as a creative minded thinker. The thought that WE, meaning all of us, get to contribute our own verse to the gigantic poem that is life is such a gift. And I try to take advantage of that gift every day.

A lot of people ask me where I get my inspiration from. The truth is I don't really know how to answer that. I get my inspiration from life, mainly, from doing a lot of thinking and observing of the everyday tragedies and disappointments of life. From sitting alone in my room and wondering about things. I write what I feel. And that's something that's hard to do sometimes.

Anyways, I think I just remembered why I don't do classic "blog posts" very often. Because I tend to change the subject a lot. While I'm rambling, I might as well just say that "Contagious" Part 16 will be posted tomorrow. Which is Sunday in case you're living in a different part of the world.

Oh, and the next time you wake up in the morning, ask yourself "What will your verse be?" Take a look from another person's point of view. You might be surprised what you find out about yourself that you didn't already know.