Sonder
Life is a miracle. How rare and beautiful it is to even just exist! How exquisite it is to experience the fullness the universe has offered us. Truly, the universe was made by God for our eyes to gaze upon, for the fullness and beauty of life was made just for us, for love, by love. I’ll be honest, it took me a long time to fully realize the extent of the lovely world we live in. If you had asked me a year ago where I envisioned myself to be, I would have probably responded, “dead.” I don’t mean at all to be dramatic when I say this. By no means at all was I exaggerating. I truly and fully believed that my life was so low, so worthless, so pitiless, that I, Maria Hannah Chaer, would not survive past the ripe old age of eighteen. How wrong I was.
It is no secret that life is not all sunshine and rainbows. In fact, most of us probably are just living day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute, barely scraping by on the little dredges of serotonin our brain deigns to give us as it sees fit. I don’t blame any of you for feeling low, for feeling helpless, for feeling empty like a shell. COVID especially has caused an abundance of these feelings inside of me. The isolation, the distancing, the gazing through our phone screens, wistfully dreaming of a different life. It is such a shame that this lifestyle of loneliness is what our society has come to, but alas it is necessary in order for a change. However, it still really sucks. Us humans were not made for loneliness. We were made for a love so great and powerful that with a mere touch of fingers we see stars in our eyes, that with a single kiss we feel a hurricane erupt in our hearts, that with a hug we feel a thousand splendid suns light up even the most dark of places.
I am lucky to have found that sort of love, even if I don’t get to feel it every day. The reality of my situation is, and will always seem to be, in my opinion, bittersweet. Yes, I have drank from the fountain of love and tasted its sweetest waters, but it always seems to be just out of my reach. A family divided, a boyfriend miles away, the world brushing past my fingertips only to be whisked away leaving me with a faint taste of a love I could see but never quite have. I have not seen my family in over a year, (almost two but who’s counting?) COVID has driven love apart and tested every nerve in our body, leaving cracks in a body that was not created to withstand such pressure. To deprive someone of love is just as bad as depriving them of food and water, and right now we are in the worst sort of drought imaginable. It’s a whimsical sort of dream one has, to love beyond compare, beyond measure space and time. But it is oh so sad to see one’s dream shattered before it even starts.
I had a dream once, but sometimes even our deepest of yearnings never see the light. And so we move on and find a different dream. As I am pretty sure the saying goes, when one door closes, another one opens. And maybe if you can’t find another door, try using the window.
A year ago, my doors were shut. The room was dark and not even a crack of light shone through. But that is when I found my window. My reason to live. My love. And that love was me falling in love with myself, over and over again until I was head over heels, breathless with love. How will you learn to love the world and the ethereal creatures that live upon it if you cannot love the most beautiful being of all, yourself?
God gave us a gift. Simply speaking, it is the gift of life. It is the gift of the song of the birds, and the gift of snow against the windowsill. It is the gift of the first cry of a newborn baby, and the gift of watching wave after wave crash upon the shore. It is the breeze on a hot summer day, and the laughter of our friends when we are sad. It is watching your love sleep on your shoulder, and the reassuring squeeze of a hand when you’re afraid. That is what makes life worth living. Not how much money we make or how many friends we have or what kind of car we drive or how attractive we look. It is a cumulative collection of our experiences that we imprint on this earth. It is seeing the joy we give to others by simply being ourselves. There truly is no greater gift than the gift we give by staying true to ourselves through the gift of love.
