Quintessence

There are words I don’t understand. Words like mimetic, quintessential- I do understand that last one. It means a perfect example or important feature of something. Which brings me to this: what is the quintessence of life? Words that I do not understand are as many as the people I will never understand. But unlike words, you can’t look people up in a dictionary and find their meaning. Life would be easier if we could look  ourselves up in a dictionary and find all the meanings to us, and all the things that make us tick. Why can’t everyone be a plain glass? The world would be a better place; a new variety, complexity and beauty of human existence, and in all this life would be simple. We would go through it knowing that we could know it all if and when we wanted to. But it would be a terrible place for human existence. Your soul would do just fine in a world like this but not your body. There is fire and there is ice; just like night and day. We appreciate one in the absence of the other. Joy is nothing without sorrow. We all go through moments of great sadness and even if we experience endless bouts of joy- which is basically impossible in this lifetime- we’d still appreciate joy knowing that there is sorrow, and that it exists. Many of us have lived and died trying to figure out what exactly this life is. We spend half the time trying to put the pieces that we think fit together. And half of the time, we are right. The other half, we spend searching and trying to atone for mistakes committed along the way.

In an attempt to convey my message across this channel, my first thought was of our fallible humanity. We are told many times that when you fail, try, try again, or the far-fame quote: “Fall down seven times rise up eight. While there is no guarantee that you will always rise up when you fall, - you could be paralyzed from the waist down- it is a perfect example of the highs and lows we go through. We sing and testify of God’s goodness when the sun and moon smile at us and even the clouds give us a shoulder rub. When times are good, the things we are capable of are limitless because every good feeling in our body is heightened. But at the onset of hard times, we run for cover with hope that good times are not far away, we start to eschew from some kind of luxuries. We change and we swap praises for “God why?” which is reasonable. But you boldly came to God asking that He make your life a testimony, did you think it will taste like milk and honey?  We should remember that hard times do not mean that what we are capable of is limited. Our reach exceeds our limits. This is affirmative because necessity is the mother of invention. We should remember that we are the quintessence of life. There is no life without us.

Before I check out, here is something to nibble on. To be refined, you need to be fired in a furnace. That is how you become a testimony. People have to see your before and your now.