This Looks Like How I Saw Those Crushed Up Plants I Put In Bowls Outside When I Was 10. . . This Looks

`` War. . . ``

We talk about war a lot.

We talk about war, racism, poverty. We talk about death and every negative thing about history. And that's important. If we didn't remember it, we would be doomed to repeat it, wouldn't we?

But it seems we never talk about the peace.

We don't talk about times of peace, of comfort. The soft moments. The other half of what makes us human. We don't talk enough about art, about life. What was an average person's life like back then? They had families and favorite colors. They were just like us. Human.

Yet all we talk about is war.

So you see, I have a problem with letting things die.

I love you dead punctuation marks.

At what age does one start to feel nostalgia? Because I am not that age; not nearly, and yet that is all I feel. I feel nostalgic about things I wasn't even alive to see, about places I've never visited, about people I've only met in passing. And maybe it isn't nostalgia, but I don't have a better word for it.

`` Everything . . . ``

I want to learn everything.

I want to learn the secrets of the galaxy and the mysteries of the ocean. I want to know all the ideas that could become the technology of tomorrow and all the thoughts that shaped our past. I want to learn every language, both alive and dead. I want to play every instrument, I want to read every book, I want to listen to every song. I want to learn every intricate equation of math and every technique of physical art. I want to write and draw and sculpt and dance and sing. I want to talk to people from all around the world, learn of their cultures and their lives. I want to go to medical school, law school, culinary school, and trade school. I want to work small jobs and large jobs. I want to save lives and preserve them.

I wish I could do everything. . .

making mistakes

I was talking to a friend who is also a med student about mistakes and feeling awful when you make them and how hard it is to be at this point of medical training where you don't really know what you're doing at all. Not to mention the imposter syndrome.

And she told me: "There's a certain number of mistakes I am for sure going to make while doing all of this. A certain number that just belongs to me. So every time I make a mistake, it's one down, one less to go, one more I probably won't make again or at least won't make it as often."

So she keeps a little notebook and draws a line for each mistake, then writes down what she learned from it.

And it just ?? Reframed everything for me ??

Looking at mistakes as an integral part of your learning that also happens to be absolutely inevitable takes so much pressure off the proccess. A mindset that frames every mistake so tangibly as a step towards being better and not a symptom of failure or a negative reflection of yourself, your skills, your character.

I went out and bought a little notebook for myself that same day.

More than 10 for me though

10 years from now ill be in a white coat with a stethoscope and this past week MIGHT have been worth it 🙏

`` Curiosity. . .``

Curiosity, really, is so human, so engraved into our brains that it's hard to escape yet somehow we lose it so young. What happened, what changed that we no longer feel the yearning, the need to know, the need to answer all these questions we ask ourselves. What happened that we no longer ask these questions?

. . . What happened?

I don't like it when things end.

I don't know what to add to this, I just know I need to save this Lol

In the ruins of Pompeii, there is a room inside a house where two men were painting on the day Mt. Vesuvius erupted in AD 79.

The master painter was at work on the fresco itself, twining vines in green, men and women looking out of the image to one side. His partner, probably an apprentice or lesser, younger painter, was laying down fresh plaster nearby. We know it was fresh because the pumice left significant pockmarks in it as it dried that we can still see today.

There are holes where a shelf stood holding the different colors of paint, in the wall just below the unfinished fresco. We found jars of paint on the floor - red green blue white yellow black. We found his tools, the brushes and the pot of lime that kept the paint wet.

He spilled lime on the painting.

We can tell that, too. It is caked clear as day over the unfinished work.

In a documentary I am watching, an Italian anthropologist discussing the moment of eruption looks to the cameraman and says, with real sincerity, "We found their tools, but we didn't find them. We hope that they ran away, that they survived."

Next door, a baker left his livestock behind when he fled. We found the skeletal remains of the animals who helped to move the millstone, but we did not find the baker.

Not that we are certain of, anyway.

I just wanted to take a moment to think about a modern Italian anthropologist looking at unfinished paintings and bread turned to stone by ash and time, hoping to himself that those people made it out in time.

We are separated by almost two thousand years, but we still have empathy for lives facing terror beyond their understanding. We still hope against hope that two painters ran out of town and made a new life somewhere else, that they escaped before the final pyroclastic flows descended.

We hope the baker moved to another town.

We recognize ourselves in what was left behind, and hope that these people - who could have been us, but for a trick of time and place - had a fighting chance to survive.

I just.

Sometimes, I love people.

I love us.

`` A Letter to Time ``

Dear Time,

You remind me of the Sea. Unable to be restrained. Unable to be controlled. Unable to be contained. You are merciless, yet your movement is necessary. You steal away our precious moments before we are ready to let go, just as the rising tides carry away the forgotten toys of young children. But in the moments that we need to escape, to move, you are calm, gentle, and slow. When we are like a sailboat in a windless sea, you choose to quiet.

I understand though, Time, that you might wish to slow down just as much as I wish you would. The Moon controls the tides, so tell me, who controls you, Time? Perhaps we are the ones that make things seem too fast, or perhaps it has always been like this. Perhaps you wish you could slow down the good moments, cradle us in your arms, and tell us you'll make it last as long as we'd like.

Perhaps we are your children, Time, and it pains you that we think you cause our suffering.

With all the love and forgiveness in the world,

a young human