How to Steal the Meaning of Life

Everyone is a safe to be cracked
Filled with scriptures and treasures too fragile
To bounce gaily in the crowd
Much more accustomed to winding
Whirlpooled circles of quiet deliberate darkness
Locked and padded in depth that
Swings my puzzler open
And throws me a taste of the elementary wisdoms
Thought natural by the gods.

To possess even their childish knowledge
I would play the theft
Drilling, cracking, prying for the truth
Risking Eden and embracing Hades to learn
Why are we here?
What is it all for?
This enigma deposited microscopic inch
By inch in every sapien skull
Can only be extracted by the experienced
Twist of fingers clicking in place
The combination of questions
Unapologetically large
Forever forgetting possibility of talk ever being small.

This poem was inspired from the realization that each one of us has a fascinating story to tell and that each of us holds a little microscopic piece to the solution of the mystery of life. In the past, I'd throw both friendships and relationships away because the person didn't interest me any longer and I resented them for not having one experience that I could learn from. But now, I'm beginning to wonder if the problem exists in me. Maybe the reason why I thought these people so commonplace was because I didn't know how to ask the right questions.

I was watching Taxicab Confessions of HBO the other night, and I was impressed by how much depth existed beneath the surface of every passenger. And I envied the taxi drivers because they truly have an amazing skill of being able to read their passengers and come up with questions that will tap into the most intimate details of their lives. They can take very personal questions, such as "How's the sex?" and make them sound as harmless and as natural as asking, "So what do you do for a living?" It's not that I'm particularly interested in the intimate details of people's sex lives, I just want to get around the meaningless small talk and go straight to the heart of what's important. I want to get the most out of every acquaintance I make and try my best to gain some wisdom from their experiences.

I'm also starting to understand why documentaries like Taxicab Confessions and reality shows like The Real World are getting more and more popular as the years progress. It's as if we've gotten tired of the well polished, well worked pieces of fiction that we watch on sitcoms and soap operas, and the better the writing is, the less we feel like it mirrors our lives. Sometimes, I don't what to see the mystery solved in an hour. Sometimes, I don't want the jokes to link up and work together. Sometimes, it's comforting to watch a show that is raw, and doesn't have the pretension of having a beginning, middle, and end. The characters just are, and that's enough because our day to day lives rarely take the form of a well-revised television series.