O ME! O LIFE!

The year is ticking away with only a few hours left and many of us are pondering about it. More aware of time now, more aware of how the tick-tock sound of the clock marks our lives.

There’s a certain kind of nostalgia that comes with the year ending. You wonder if you made a difference in the year and if the coming year is going to be any different. If this is all there is to life: time passing.

Walt Whitman, an American Poet also wondered about this in his poem: o me! o life!

Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,

Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,

Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)

Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,

Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,

Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,

The question, O me! so sad, recurring — What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer.

That you are here — that life exists and identity,

That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

Whitman admits how things can seem futile, how there can be a recurring dissatisfaction with life and how the struggle never stops. Whitman questions his purpose in all these — this giant universe that never stops spinning.

Luckily he also answered his own question: That you are here. That you have life is enough reason to keep living and to keep striving to form an identity, to make an impact on this world. The universe won’t stop spinning but you can make a mark on it. It might be a smudge of a mark, but a mark nonetheless. Your mark.

Contribute a verse, Whitman says. Contribute a verse.