Die hard.

I have walked in the rain.

Water as drizzle, as mist, as spittle. It merely taps on my skin, only damp, nothing menacing or pressurized, nothing harsh or vigorous. Drip. Drip. Drip.

Hello.

I have run in the rain. Water as torrent. The back end of hurricane, having raced over ocean and mountain range, lashing and whipping its ferocity, rendering eyeglasses so wet they needed removing. Half blinded, soaked, ravaged. I ran.

But the sun...

The sun - oh, it has boiled and roasted and baked and burnt me. Made me faint. Made me freckle. Made me blister. It set. That sun. Our sun.

Our Son.

The Son, he has shone. He has glistened and warmed and enlightened and risen and fallen. That Son. Ours. Everyone's. Life's.

Shining. Shining. Shining.

The earth. She. (Why She?) She has absorbed both water and fire. The planet has embraced and fought off the onslaught, that rush of runoff down gullies and straight back to the sea. That sea of Everyone. Of Everything. That sea of yesterday and tomorrow. The earth. Our earth, from which grows both the flowers and the weeds. Those blossoms feeding the bees which make all of our survival possible. Those weeds which choke.

Those weeds which choke.

The earth. This earth. Our grounding and place and space in time. Mother earth.

She.

Survival of the fittest means, what? Exactly, what?
What is 'fit'?
Is it physical? Mental? Spiritual? Emotional? All of these?

Four and a half decades have taught me that each is heaviest in value to some.
To the athlete, the physical - speed, grace, lift, rise, success. Winning at all cost. Glory.

Glory.

To the scholar, the knowledge - the books read, the history, the supposition of what all the tomorrows mean. The Knowledge.

Glory.

To the priest - the love, the compassion, the stories and learnings. The purity of soul, to repent for sins of the fathers. Of the mothers. Of the ancestors. All of them.

And in penitence, still greater Glory.

To the empath, that understanding. That yearning to wear those shoes. That need to feel. To be. To LIVE.

The greatest Glory of them all.

And we, Humanity, we are all of these. Yet one does not know the other. May not care to know the other.

We, Humanity, are so flawed. So splintered.
We, Humanity, are losing. Because we are against ourselves. And we are against ourselves because we remain too far within ourselves. Too engrossed in 'me'. When you look back at what is the greatest motivation, it most always starts from within.

We are born soft, but we die hard.

Like the pick of an ice sculptor, chipping off shards of the solid to make something which has only risen from her own imagination, we chip away at life until we shape what that meaning is for us and us alone.

And in the end, it really is us. Alone.

I have walked in the rain.
I have run in the rain.
Some days I make the rain.

Some days I am the rain.

The irony of this life is not lost on me. A bullied kid, moved country, became an immigrant, married to an immigrant in that country with whom I created an amazing little boy. This heart on legs, this warrior, this firestarter, this raging flood of possibility. This boy. Our boy. Society's 'problem'.

Our world.

Is it any wonder that we will die hard?

To people everywhere, there are flaws in us all.
Immigrants.
Ginger.
Asian.
Disabled.
But we are life. We are perfectly imperfect.

Our own trinity. Our own story. Our own rain, and sun, and earth, and moon, and stars, and planets and universe and oceans, and life, and history, and future.

"I am a part of all that I have met," said Tennyson.

We are all one, yet so separate.
Soft.
Hard.
Somewhere in between. Ebb and flow. Rain and fire and earth.

Life still rolls, and with it - so too do we.