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Look around the Web. Do you see the rushing river of visual art, impassioned writing, humor, and new ideas pouring out and spreading around social media and other sites? True, a lot of garbage and poison comes with it, but there is still enough good work to keep anyone with access intrigued and uplifted.
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Or as Diane di Prima wrote in Revolutionary Letter #2, in 1971, embracing a Vietnamese perspective during the war there:
The value of an individual life a credo they taught us
to instil fear, and inaction, ‘you only live once’
a fog in our eyes, we are
endless as the sea, not separate, we die
a million times each day, we are born
a million times, each breath life and death
get up , put your shoes on, get
started, someone will finish
Tribe
an organism, one flesh, breathing joy as the stars
breathe destiny down on us, get
going, join hands, see to business, thousands of sons
will see to it when you fail, you will grow
a thousand times in the bellies of your sisters…
Today I went down to my fish wheel to harvest some salmon. At the bottom of the box was a small juvenile salmon which was caught while migrating to the sea, not like the rest of the adults on their way to their spawning grounds. I took the little fish and dug a little spot for it to rest on the side of the river until it was ready to continue on its way to the sea to grow to adulthood and maybe return to spawn in another four years. Chances are that it will become a meal for something out there before that happens, but I saw value in its seemingly insignificant life and did something to preserve it.
Think of how much more valuable each human being is in this world. Think of our ability to have a positive influence in our interactions with people, even the seemingly insignificant ones. That’s part of enjoying the journey.