We live for tomorrow, yet we don’t walk forward
We see the green light, but we don’t reach out
We hear the our dreams cry out to us, and we don’t respond
We know of the present’s beauty, but we live in the past
We feel our calling, but we don’t heed
We pray for a savior when salvation is already in our hands
We long for a triumph that we don’t really want
We wait for wisdom, but we dodge its glance
We run into battles that mustn’t be fought
We run from the battles that we are needed in
We know the cost of silence, but we don’t speak
We have the truth, and we bury it deep
We search for love with a closed heart
We want the things we cannot have
We ask why when we dread the answer
We live.
Not because we are whole,
But because we hope.
Still, imperfect, we hope.
These questions return and relentlessly recur.
We ride endless trains through cities of unspoken thoughts
among people who can never quite answer.
To be met with reproach? Or gratitude?
Maybe
Life breathes in uncertainty.
Imagine how mundane things would be if everything fell neatly into place.
When things break apart, that’s the soul breathing.
The wounds are where light finds a way in.
The movie goes on
and you can write a scene.
Maybe the tragedy of life isn’t imperfection,
but our insistence on perfection.
The unknown isn’t a void to fear,
but a canvas waiting for color.
Every ache, every question, every fleeting joy
a line in the eternal dialogue between what is and what could be.
And in that dialogue, we live:
uncertain, unfinished,
yet endlessly becoming.
Jesse is an Aleph from THE Ohio Northern Region #23’s Mac Miller AZA #505 and is currently serving as Aleph Godol.
All views expressed on content written for The Shofar represent the opinions and thoughts of the individual authors. The author biography represents the author at the time in which they were in BBYO.