We noticed the world was trying very hard to be impressive.
It stacked achievements like trophies and spoke in loud, declarative sentences.
We watched quietly, from the edge of the field, where the grass is allowed to grow unevenly.
Someone asked who among us was greatest.
A strange question, we thought, when the ants were carrying something ten times their size
And the moon was pulling entire oceans without asking permission.
One of us knelt to examine a feather.
Another wondered aloud whether feathers remember the birds from which they came.
The third laughedβnot unkindlyβbecause the question itself was already an answer.
We have learned this much:
Superiority is a costume worn by fear.
Wonder needs no disguise.
The world keeps insisting we should harden,
but we have seen what happens to things that never bend.
Trees snap. Rivers endure.
Some people mistake attention for fragility,
gentleness for surrender,
and quiet for absence.
They are listening for trumpets.
We are listening for heartbeat, wingbeat, breath.
Every creature is astonishing once you stop ranking them.
The burping brother.
The boy who throws the earth farther than anyone expected.
The quiet mind that survives cruelty and still chooses to rebuild instead of burn.
None of this makes us special.
That is the relief of it.
We will all decay.
We will all perish.
Let us at least notice where we are while we are here.
Let us be loyal to curiosity.
Let us belong to the living world rather than standing above it, clipboard in hand.
If this looks like softness, so be it.
Water wears down mountains without ever raising its voice.
And if you find us staring at the sky, smiling for no obvious reason,
it is because we have remembered something simple and inconvenient:
There was never a ladder.
There was only the field.
And we were always standing in it together.
