Hanging on

The flickering flame of life passes quick and incomprehensibly and before we catch a true glimpse of it, it burns out, leaving a char of blackness where it once stood. It's during the times, sitting before a tabletop, piled with papers and writing utensils when one begins to ponder the reason for his own existence. Is it to rise up every day, to face the grueling day ahead, and mechanically force his own body into action, while his own mind becomes a thoughtless slave to the demands of life. 

Day by day, his heart beats alongside the constant tick of the clock- his life only pushed forward with the progression of time. And he hangs on to the digits of time, gasping and struggling just to remain alive and his hope rests upon the belief that time will save him. The day will come when his unbearable pain ends, and he can find comfort within himself again. 

Before the midnight candle and the silence of the night, he feels a consuming emptiness, of meaning and feeling. He pushes ahead in life without knowing why he pushes ahead- and the constant realization that everything ends with death pervades his mind. He tries desperately to push aside such thoughts and to continue the scratching of his paper with pencil, and the pushing of buttons before a screen. He neglects death and denies it's existence, and doubly forces himself to believe that this endless movement of a pencil does indeed provide meaning in his life. 

He's alive much like a blinking flame before the soft blow of wind puts it out. He rejects the thought that his temporary emotions of emptiness aren't temporary at all. As his skin wrinkles and his eyes droop, he still continues each night with a pencil in hand to jot away at paper- word after word, pencil up and pencil down. At least now, he has grown accustomed to this rhythm of life, the beat and the song of the living dead. He knows he is hardly more alive than the faucet of his sink or the light of his room- turned on and turned off, working as a tool should work, sucked of its usage before it expires.

He is lonely in his struggle and emptiness he feels. But he seeks comfort in the company of others who are as lonely as him. Together they hang on...slowly "plagued out of life"(Hazlitt)...until they flicker out. A thin veil of smoke flow out and finally, time has saved them and now they are comfortable within the arms of death. Together they have passed by their days and together they are forgotten. I hope I'm not forgotten.