Life is not a noun, it’s a verb. It’s the neck breaking experience of being dragged through the world by our tails. It is the delighting in scenery as it flies past us, the clutching at roses before they are yanked from our reach. It is the karmic swirl of the good and the bad swarming around our haunted heads. It’s a constant cloud that lingers low, penetrated by indeterminate intervals by blinding sun. It is overwhelming good and heartstopping bad. It’s a ride we want more of and off of at wildly different times.

A merciful master and an impudent host. It rewards our tenacity with wonders that no other could simulate and keeps us in submission with horrors we deign not imagine. But you can’t have one without the other. You can’t escape the latter without forfeiting the former. It’s a rigged sport with a game keeper who keeps changing the rules. We live within bounds and yet are made to cheat in order to win.

It’s only once you realize that nothing is set in stone, nothing is defined, nothing must be obeyed, that you can start reaping the true prizes. It’s only once you find a still spot to focus on in the turning world that you find some balance in the whiplash. It’s only once you stop being afraid of what you can’t change and can’t know that the good gets better and the rest falls away like white noise. It’ll have morphed into something new by tomorrow, anyway. No sense in losing your head about it now.