Veronica B.

Andal

14

If the Stars exploded, we’ll be Fireproof

It was one fine afternoon in April when I opened my browser to open Spotify and put my
favorite playlist on loop. Halfway through my schedule, “Youth” by Troye Sivan started playing. I was
having a bad day, contradicting to the beautiful weather and when the song’s instrumentals echoed in
my ears, I took a pause in doing my homework and lay down in my bed for a bit, enjoying the message
and the tune I’ve always been addicted to. I chose from one of my million daydreaming ideas that can be
turned into a novel or a movie only if I’m as sedulous as I look; I chose to discuss about the meaning of
life that day.

Life is...life. The general idea of being a thing with four limbs that breathes and walks, without
having the certainty on where our lives or our earth really came from despite the 4,300 religions and
thousands of theories trying to explain it all, still bothers and overwhelms me. It isn’t a period between
birth and death for me, though, as per most dictionaries defines it. Rather, it’s an invisible thing inside us
that snaps when it gets too much, something that we go at great lengths to destroy it. I wonder, on the
last phrase, to what extent could people go to destroy life? Why would someone pay for a cigarette or
an alcohol, knowing that it could wreak havoc on their body system? Why would someone buy
chainsaws knowing it could be used to destroy trees, where they get their oxygen? The answer probably
is that they couldn’t handle the heat anymore. That of which the pressure of life snaps them like an
elastic band heated by hellfire, and before they realize it, they have lost their will to invigorate and
preserve life. That’s life, though. No matter how high someone’s life status is, no matter how strong a
tree’s species is, no matter what breed of an animal, we, living things, eventually get destroyed.

But destruction doesn’t always mean death. Destruction is life slipping away from a living thing
even though the physical body is still there. It’s suffering. It’s dying while still being alive. When I laid
there in my bed, head bobbing along to the lively beat, I realized there’s nothing I could do to live life
without it being ruined. Death, suffering, destruction; blah blah blah, whatever you call it. It’s always
present, always there, whether it’d be the homework you left untouched on your study table, your
plants wilting on the backyard or your kitten wandering far from home.

So what to do when you absolutely cannot avoid destruction? Simple. Live the destruction up.
Face it. If you’re ever a tree waiting for the deforestation of a mining company, then open up your
branches and welcome it with glee. Wait for them to cut your limbs, and take note of the smile in their
faces as they touch the rich sap of your bark. When you have finally been destroyed, think of the
happiness rather than the sadness. Think of the light rather than the dark. Use your destruction to learn
and stand up again, and that’s when you’ll learn you have preserved yourself for a much harder battle.
You have a certainty by now that you’ll survive it.

My take is, to cherish and energize life, face the hardships rather than moping about it. Use your voice,
make a move. You can’t stop people with chainsaws wanting to cut a tree, but you know you’re
determined to plant ten more trees in replace of it. Finish your homework, water your plants, and find
your kitten. When Sivan sang “we've no time for getting old, mortal body, timeless souls, cross your
fingers, here we go,” he was talking about the evergreen capability of life to push on, that there’s no
time for sulking around. Rather, we surge for the inevitable and use our previous destruction to win the
next battle.

When you look up at the sky, you see stars. You hardly ever notice the darkness surrounding them.

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