particles. waves. both.

so every day you struggle
to pedal your little bicycle up the steep hours to the brink of tomorrow.

I had a brilliant writing teacher my senior year, Mrs. Nancy Watson-Weir. I wanted to be just like her, only not so tall.

she taught me how to write fluid, rock hard paragraphs. she praised my punctuation and varied sentence patterns. I wanted to be just like her.

she taught us all sides of argument and to never feel inadequate.

but how can you not feel inadequate? you are just one little hole in the vast universe. you can never fill all that emptiness.

but do you need to?

you know there are lots of other people out there, trying to fill the same emptiness. some of that emptiness even belongs to them. some of it is their job. their responsibility to fill. why?

maybe their soul calls out to their respective patches of emptiness, the same way your soul feels sucked into its emptiness.

really?

all the holes fit somewhere.

but really it is silly to talk about holes as if they were anything. they aren't. they are an absence. they are nothing.

... but all the something can't exist without the nothing to fill in the background. can it?

or will someday all the background be mushed together, all the layers made one layer, flat and even and perfect and depressingly uniform?

and what does this have to do with inadequacy?

there is dust. there is sunlight. you are both. worthless and priceless. both.

so go ahead, feel inadequate. humility is a good thing.

but then wake up and go be brilliant.

Mrs. Watson-Weir also taught us to never waste the moments you have in your hand on moments sitting up at the top of a hill. live in now. this moment. don't kill it with dreams of 5 pm friday evening or midnight on new year's eve.

so even if you are in the thralls of a painful inadequacy, revel in the moment?
yes. as much as glory and despair can co-exist.

if nothing and everything can co-exist so intimately, why not? if all your brilliance can encompass one large pit of black emptiness, why not?