Are You Listening?

We are humanity. Right? 

Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, or an idealist, or maybe I don't know enough about life, but I wish humanity agreed this is not the best we can do.
Maybe I want my head in the clouds. 
Maybe I prefer to be a little clueless. 
Maybe that's how I would rather think, that we are ships built for a wider and sweeter ocean than this.
Maybe I don't believe in just the world that's right in front of me--a pale shadow of neon-lighted signs and places of pleasure as far as the eye can see.
I believe there is greater pleasure, purpose, meaning than what our eyes just want to tell us.
And that is confidence to keep hoping.
Because if there is anything I want most, it's something that is bigger than what I already know. 
More intense than I can imagine. 
More beautiful than anything my eyes can seize on this earth.
So when people say we've reached our potential, we've come to the greatest era of mankind, or that the world has never been better, I have to pause. 
Overall world hunger may have gone down.
Extreme poverty may be waning in several continents. 
We are enough for each other and we make this earth enough for us. 
But even with all the check-marks checked in this hungry world, even if everything were perfectly planned and executed and aligned and sweetened, I still wait for something.
Something outside of myself, yet near as the heart-beat of the person next to me.
Am I the only one, or is the rest of humanity listening for the heart-beat as well?
Please tell me I am not alone.

Beauty is Truth

Sometimes I can feel things of beauty so much better than I can explain them... words are not always sufficient for the depth that one needs to share an experience with someone else.

        Of course, there is always drawing and painting--both are so entirely different yet complementary to writing that sometimes it's the only way I can truly release a thought. It's best to save drawing for a time when you can't satisfy your creative state with words; then it flows and feels constructive. I have heard that a picture's worth a thousand words, and sometimes, I have to admit to the truth in that.

        Why is it that I always try to explain and describe everything? I had a friend say to me the other day that he spent much of his life trying to find a formulaic explanation for it, a sort of reason for why everything exists the way it does. But he found that after a while, the art of explaining everything got so tiring that much of the joy was taken out of things that can't be argued into rationality, like beauty, and relationships.
         The fact is, some things cannot be said: but that doesn't make them any less important and wonderful. Most of the things I can't explain are beautiful, sacred, solemn in a sense: I shouldn't soil them with my harried attempts at proving their worth through speaking or writing. They are above me, are something which can be enjoyed, loved, even tangibly felt at times, but are not captive by my descriptions of them. Undefinable, yet purely real....

          On that note, I shall say no more, and leave your imaginations to find the rest.