I'm not sure who's going to see this, but if you did and you found something useful here, than I am glad. Because you deserve to be reminded that your expressions born from your heart and the kindnesses you share are appreciated. They are precious beyond measure and you are beautiful. Thank you.

Yet even so, I am reminded that it is a choice to continue through those voices of doubt and the obstacles that challenge your journey. And the hope that those of us who had been convinced to abandon that path can at any time choose to travel it again. And that makes people beautiful to me.

Because a part of you isn't giving in. You are striving, consciously or not, to bridge people in ways that only people can. It's magic, to express yourself, and anyone is able to make that magic in our own ways. And it's also easy to stop. We're often encouraged to stop. By authority and peers.

I look at the news, I think about the suffering happening and so little happening to address that suffering and the lack of justice. It makes me feel powerless and angry. I've been sitting in that feeling for a while, but hit a catharsis today. And it's because of you guys. Those still expressing.

Whether it's illustration, painting, singing, writing music acting, dancing, comedy, writing, making video games, playing video games, journalism, GMing, playing TTRPGs game design, dating, raising a child, not wanting children but being kind to those you meet, choosing kindness and integrity.

When coupled with kindness, especially the inconvenient kindness that hurts us, magic becomes manifest. It summons tears and laughter, thought and realization, inspiration and identity, among any number of things. This thing that you all do, this act of creation from the heart, is magical.

Don't get me wrong, art is often not pure, and creativity has been a tool of manipulation and evil alongside sincerity and good. But even so, that's an expression as well, even the reprehensible. It's a human quality. An expression of the human soul, whatever your personal definition of that may be.

And I don't think that's hyperbole. Art, creativity, this thing of expression that we can do has allowed us to communicate with each other that it has granted people immortality. Such acts defined cultures, preserved histories, and gave us the insights of ghosts, our ancestors.

Fighting with creativity and kindness. Those are powerful qualities, upon which I believe make the foundation of the human experience. As a species, we have done terrible things to our world and to each other. Yet, as saccharine as it may sound, art and empathy have let us be more.

I guess this will be a musing thread, since I'm in the mind space. But so much about this year and these times in general sucks. World politics, anti-intellectualism, the war against art in favour of convenience and capital. It sucks. But life itself doesn't. Because there are still people fighting.

oh no