The Existential Tapestry

What does it mean to exist? Is it simply to draw breath? To think of oneself as an entity, separate from other entities? Could it also be to feel empathy for others? To feel a prick on the thumb and the warm blood drip from the end of your nail, landing, bright red in contrast to the dull brown earth? Heart racing from the fear of pain and death. Hearts beating from moments of passionate love, inside of two intertwined bodies, striving to be one! The calm, tranquil emotion of love and acceptance. Are these things existence? To run along a green field, racing the very wind at your back for no other reason than to see how fast you can go. To laugh and love and paint and drink and enjoy all of your life! Ah! Is this existence?! Poetic metaphors aside, the bad times are part of it too. The tears and the pain. The sadness at loss, a great pit growing from within threatening to swallow you where you stand. The wracking of your chest, so heavy and hard you begin to think your bones will break from it. The desperation of loneliness, like a separate form of boredom that’s intensity can be so great we lose our minds to it. The moments of ugliness that can exist within our own souls. These are all existence. Yet, is it true that we are what we do and if we choose to live trite and meaningless lives, we ourselves are trite and meaningless? Yet we still exist. Is it right to search for meaning or do we give up too much of our existence by pursuing any obsession? Is it fair to say that this tapestry weaves itself yet we add our own undeniable patterns to it as well? Random events, actions and reactions, making the most or creating the worst. What pattern will you weave?