Today as I took a break from work to take a short walk in sun while running an errand I was stopped by a pleasant couple who wanted to thank me for my poetry.

They mentioned they had purchased my books and hoped I would host a reading at some point so they could get me to sign their copies.

They spent several minutes talking with me about how they had studied poetry and their feelings of its value along with their compliments on my writing.

Wow. What a wonderful and timely boost. To be seen. To have my existence verified and validated.

If you have read anything by Sartre or Camus you understand this sense of either existing “too much” or not at all. That to be isolated in one’s own mind, away from others, can lead to a view of the world as a projection from elsewhere. As if it were something unreal or mythical. A place that we do not belong to.

When we fall into this thinking we seek or are grateful for others to break into our lives in the best possible way like this couple did. In those moments and the time following you know you exist in a way you may have lost before. We all do it to one degree or another.

When life makes us numb and we become used to the things surrounding to the point they become invisible we seek out things and people to pierce of lives in one way or another. We seek out gratitude, compliments, passion, love, lust, even hate and anger…extreme and sometimes destructive things to shake us from the numbness and sleep we can sometimes fall into. Things that make us feel alive for a while.

At its best this pursuit is like the pursuit of a morning coffee or an evening glass of wine. At it’s worst our seeking becomes an addiction which will destroy us in the end.

I exist. For a while now, I know this. I am grateful for it.