Crow and Flame

Lately I’ve been questioning existence…

Not in the dramatic kind of way that looks like sobbing in the rain in a movie. More like the quiet kind.

The kind that creeps in when you’re folding laundry, driving to work, staring at the sky, or lying awake at 2 a.m. wondering why the world feels so heavy and so temporary at the same time.

The kind that asks questions with no easy answers.

Who am I?

Why am I here?

What does any of this mean?

And maybe the most haunting question of all:

Does it matter?

Sometimes I look at humanity and I feel overwhelmed. Not just by suffering, but by the sheer magnitude of everything—war, grief, love, cruelty, tenderness, hunger, hope. The way we build and destroy. The way we reach for each other and still miss.

The earth keeps spinning, indifferent and faithful, while people fall apart inside their own bodies.

And it makes me wonder if we were ever meant to understand any of this.

The Universe itself was born from Chaos.  I’ve always been drawn to Greek mythology. Not because I think it has all the answers, but because it tells the truth in metaphor.

The Greeks believed that in the beginning there was Chaos—not chaos like messiness, but chaos like emptiness. A void. A nothingness. A great unknown.

And from that chaos came existence.

From chaos came the earth.

From chaos came the skies.

From chaos came desire.

The ancient Greeks called it Eros—not just romance, but the force of longing. The pull toward creation. The hunger for meaning. The ache that makes life reach forward instead of collapse inward.

And honestly… that feels accurate.

Because aren’t we all born from chaos in some way?

We come into this world screaming, into lives we didn’t choose, into families shaped by generations of pain and resilience. We inherit stories. We inherit wounds. We inherit beauty too. We spend so much of our lives trying to make sense of the chaos we came from.

Trying to turn it into something that resembles purpose.

The earth keeps living even when we don’t understand. The earth doesn’t ask permission to bloom. Seasons come and go with relentless consistency. Winter does not apologize for being cold. Spring doesn’t hesitate. The trees don’t question their worth. The moon doesn’t panic because it isn’t the sun.

It just exists.

And sometimes I envy that.

Because being human means being self-aware enough to suffer. It means being conscious of time. Of death. Of regret. Of how short everything is. We live knowing we are temporary. And yet we still desire.

We still love.

We still create.

We still search.

Maybe that is what it means to be human—

to be born from chaos and still choose to reach for meaning anyway.

Who I am is unchanging. When I’m spiraling, I start thinking my identity is fragile. Like I could lose myself if I make one wrong decision. Like I’m only as good as my productivity. Like I have to prove my existence over and over.

But deep down, I believe something else.

I believe who I am is unchanging.

Not in the sense that I don’t grow or evolve—I do. We all do.

But there is something in me that has always been there.

A soul-thread.

A quiet knowing.

A core.

Even when I doubt myself.

Even when I feel small.

Even when I am exhausted.

Even when I feel like I don’t belong anywhere.

There is still a steady part of me that whispers:

You are still you.

And maybe that’s what identity really is.

Not a role. Not a performance. Not an image.

But the thing inside you that survives every season.

When I can’t make sense of the universe, I find myself returning to this scripture. Not because it always gives me certainty—but because it gives me perspective.

In Ecclesiastes chapter 3, it says:

To everything there is a season,

and a time for every purpose under heaven…

A time to be born, and a time to die.

A time to weep, and a time to laugh.

A time to mourn, and a time to dance.

A time to keep, and a time to cast away.

A time to tear, and a time to sew.

A time to be silent, and a time to speak.

A time to love, and a time to hate.

A time of war, and a time of peace.

Those words don’t sugarcoat life.

They don’t promise that everything will feel good.

They don’t claim the world is fair.

But they remind me of something I desperately need to remember:

Time is bigger than my panic.

The season I’m in right now—this confusion, this aching, this identity-shaking moment—won’t last forever.

And maybe the questioning  isn’t a sign that I’m broken.

Maybe it’s a sign that I’m waking up.

Maybe it’s the soul stretching, making room for something deeper.

Because if there is a time for everything… then that means there is a time for clarity too.

There is a time for healing.

There is a time for becoming.

There is a time for peace.

And yes…

My time will come.

Sometimes I wish I could zoom out far enough to see the whole universe at once. To see the earth like a marble in the blackness. To see humanity as a flicker of light.

But maybe the point isn’t to understand it all.

Maybe the point is to live honestly while we’re here.

To create meaning where we can.

To love what is in front of us.

To hold each other when the world feels too large.

To stop fighting the fact that we are small, and instead let it humble us.

Because maybe being small doesn’t make us insignificant.

Maybe it makes us sacred.

We are dust and breath and longing.

We are chaos and desire.

We are fragile creatures standing on ancient soil.

And still we reach.

Still we hope.

Still we search for ourselves under the same sky.

And maybe that is enough.