You need a bit of poetry.
Are you tired?
Does everything feel monotonous? Are you living in different shades of grey? Have you lost your spark?
Maybe you are overworking. Overwhelmed. Underpaid.
This is all part of life. And yet, it drains the life out of us.
Constantly focusing on the mundane creates a filter over our eyes. We stop seeing the beauty. We let of go the excitement. We slowly fade our connection to our inner selves. To others. To humanity. To the world.
We exist. Day by day. But we are not alive.
I was a journalist for ten years.
Every day, I interviewed someone new. I got so much life out of it. Out of the experience of simply talking to others.
Sometimes, people drop a bomb on you. It hits you like a thousand bricks and you feel the pain they are talking about. Other times, they tell you about their personal journey and you feel goosebumps. Other times, when you least expect it, they drop a pearl of wisdom that strikes you like lightning. Or they say the most beautiful sentence you heard in the past year.
And you feel alive.
You connect to what is human in others. And, simply like that, you connect to your own human essence too.
After my years in journalism, I did a programming bootcamp. I spent five months sitting in front of a computer, coding.
It was so abstract. It was so foreign to life. In a way, it was so pointless… What was true about it? How was that real?
By the end of it, I was craving poetry.
“Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth”
— Henry David Thoreau
Have you had that feeling?
For me, it has happened throughout my life. I miss poetry sometimes.
Yet, I never read poetry. It is just the expression I use to mention this feeling.
When you feel disconnected from life. Or when you can’t remember the last time you felt inspired.
And the only possible thing to do in a moment like this is…
…to search for poetry.
It might be a song, a book, a movie, an interview, a conversation with a friend. Or just sit in the park and observe others.
Sometimes, it can be a simple line from a random song…
“21 days til I don’t miss you”
— Brian Fallon
You feel the chills. You want it to be true. You remember that time when it took 21 months. You feel the punch in the stomach, the pain, the self-pity, and the butterflies for the new love that came out on the other side.
It might be bad or good. Or none of that.
But you feel something. And if you feel, you are alive.
Clinging to little bits of poetry. That resurrect your soul from the dead. And make your life the most beautiful poem of them all.
Diana Bernardo 