Nina Djukic

But has it become too cliche to think of what unites us? Here we are, somewhere on the lifeline between birth and death. Where we are all subject to the whims of the same sky and plant our feet on the same earth. Where we fall in love and give birth and grow old and allow the cycle to begin again. Every story merely explores some question of what it means to be alive.

Ah, Peter! Think of all you missed; the injustices, to be sure, and the losses, but the delights of all of it too — the uncertainty of stepping forth without really knowing the way, the loves you never allowed to change you, the meaning you never allowed yourself to find.

Here we are, alive and kicking, our minds also staggering with the tasks we must complete. But ladies and gentlemen, amid all the moaning, groaning and bed-laying, I regret to inform you: Life is happening. We may as well try our hardest to show up and be excited about it.

Human beings have been trying for centuries to understand the reasons for the deaths of the young and beautiful, without much success.

We understand delight and agony through nothing more than the space between them. Without the knowledge of these sorrows, heaven would be boring as hell. And so, even if paradise existed, would we want it? Perhaps our fall from Eden is not a story of human sin so much as a story of our intrinsic insatiability.

Our natural impatience makes us desire above all else the day that success will burst through the door in a torrential fury. But the truth is, dreams are rarely realized in a flash. We must coast for many miles between seabirds and clouds, diligently flapping our wings to keep going, if we ever care to reach a destination.

Assuming colorblindness and natural indiscriminateness will get us into all kinds of trouble. The only way we may combat this silent fog of prejudice is by acknowledging that it it is there.

We cannot live in fear of rocking the boat, or we may as well never leave the harbor. We cannot live in fear of our world going up in flames when if your heart is right, all you will do is rise like a phoenix from the ashes, again and again.

Unfortunately, unlike Persephone, we are not guaranteed our month of paradise for every month of hell. Life isn't fair. Things are continually growing better at the same time other things grow worse. Half and half is for coffee, not life.

We are new-wave, radical, cutting-edge. We are modern. We are postmodern. Ensnared in a web of social media, modern appliances and an increasing variety of processed food options, we navigate layers of reality that our parents don't even know exist.