The weight of thoughts

What I love to do best is to think. To think and think. To lie in bed in the darkness with the fan blowing gently cool air on my face, buried beneath the covers, contemplating my purpose in this life, asking all my questions.

My questions are the same as all great thinkers and others who don't think as much but ask the same questions as all humans do.

'What is my purpose? Why am I here?'

In all my years of thinking, I still don't have an answer, but I don't really need one anymore.

My daughter is part of my answer. Though she's not all of it. She's enough. For now.

'Who am I? Why am I here?'

I am a mother. A daughter. A wife. A woman. A human being. A being. A body. A soul. Or perhaps a mind.

I think.

'Is that something only we can do?'

Humans, I mean. Think. That's what I mean.

'What is my purpose? To work?'

I worked, but it was not my purpose. My purpose in all my work was to think and speak to other humans, and, somehow, I touched their lives, and they remembered, and some of it meant something to them whether or not I knew it. And sometimes, they came back to tell me. Others did not, but that doesn't mean that it didn't mean anything to them, only, they didn't say so.

I remember things that others said to me, though I never told them. I'm telling you right now. You human that is reading this.

I remember a girl who said "never say 'I'm sorry.'" Say, "I apologize." They mean different things. Saying "I apologize" indicates that you have internalized the wrong you commited against another person, acknowledged that you were wrong, and decided to act differently in the future. Saying "I'm sorry" indicates that there is something wrong with you and that you are inherently wrong.

That's the difference between action and adjectives.

I work as a teacher, a counselor, a friend. I am not those things. They are my actions. They are what I have to offer.

I am a human being. That is what I am.

I think. That is what I do.

I write, but that is not what I am. I write for me. And also for you.

I create, but my creations are not me. Once you see them, they will mean something different to you. They become a part of the human race and will live as long as humans do. My body will die. My thoughts will not.

A man once wrote that thoughts have mass, that they exist. They are a scientific reality. They are a cause and their effect affects us all, but especially the speaker.

The girl who explained the difference between I'm sorry and I apologize probably doesn't realize the effect her words had on me. She may not even remember saying them. But they have become a part of me. Because they have mass. Because they exist, and because I do, and I will share them with my daughter that she will know she is not sorry and must apologize when she is wrong. Those thoughts will continue to exist long after I do and her, as well.