In Three Words, I Can Sum Up Everything I’ve Learned About Life. It Goes On

Robert Frost

On September 1954, American acclaimed poet Robert Frost uttered the proverbial wisdom in an article called “Robert Frost’ Secret”. Following is the excerpt from the article

“In all your years and all your travels,” I asked, “what do you think is the most important thing you’ve learned about life?”

He paused a moment, then with the twinkle sparkling under those brambly eyebrows he replied: “In three words, I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life. It goes on. In all the confusions of today, with all our troubles . . . with politicians and people slinging the word fear around, all of us become discouraged . . . tempted to say this is the end, the finish. But life — it goes on. It always has. It always will. Don’t forget that.

Recently, I realized that I’ve been drifting off to the depression path. I’ve never been affected severely by depression, even in my utmost downward moments, somehow I still go on. If I only have one thing to like about myself, it’s definitely the resilience that I have built in myself over the years.

I don’t have a lot of will to live, you know

I started using this sentence ever since I thought about what if I accidentally catch Covid-19. I talked to my friend, at length about this. This sentence kept echoing in my mind, from time to time. My friend told me to think about 5 things that related to the 5 senses, the senses that differentiate between the death and the living. I thought about one of the post I wrote when I first arrived in Bangkok. It comprises of 13 things that I enjoyed living with. All 13 things I cannot have in Bangkok or in Saigon, no wonder why I have drifted off to the dark road.

I woke up this morning, and feel like I want to vanish. In the movie Infinity Wars, Thanos with a snap of his fingers, half of the population on Earth is wiped out. I was thinking to myself, I want to be on the half side that was wiped out. Living is hard, it’s very exhausting and tiring. Living with an aware mind is even harder. I used to be an ignorant being, and it was okay to live. It’s a whole world of differences now.

I’ve been staring at the screen for the past 2 hours, and this is all I got to written out. It seems like I cannot transform my thoughts and feelings into words. All I can hear is the emptiness in my core

I hear the silence now
Right in my core
I never heard silence
Like this before

Yeah, I hear the silence now
From wall to wall
Never heard silence
Like this before

Very tall buildings
Lights at high speed
Trails on the taxis heading all around me
Up on the rooftop
Wasteland of a view
The pierce of the sirens can you hear it too