I often suffer from my straightforwardness. They call me cutting, say I am evil. I stumbled, I fell, but I'm getting up...I'm leaving. And I'm walking... And my path is overgrown with thorns... Insidiousness, malice—I meet them every day. I do not give up. And with my last strength, I am smiling. I know, the power lives in me! It dwells in the heart, pouring out handfuls of love, yet there is both pain and sorrow... Still, we need so little to be able to find happiness in small things... Smiling, I greet every sunrise. At sunset, I wave farewell with sadness. I firmly believe that goodness exists in a smile and in a friendly hand... In spring, summer, autumn and winter I was giving. And with myself I was there... If I look back across the years, I will only say—I truly lived...
# I Lived I lived the way a river lives— flowing without knowing where, my banks worn smooth by the weight of all that passed through me. I lived the way a tree lives— rooted in one place, yet reaching toward a sky that kept receding, my rings a record of drought and plenty. I lived the way a bird lives— moment to moment, the next branch always uncertain, song rising from a throat that knew no yesterday. I lived the way a stone lives— patient, silent, slowly becoming something smaller, something truer, worn by the world's indifferent hands. I lived the way a flame lives— consuming what fed it, burning brightest at the edge of its own disappearance. I lived—and that was all. No grand design, no hidden meaning, just the simple fact of it: breath following breath, day following day, until one day didn't.
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