Tuesday, March 17, 2015

Post No. 188: For St. Patrick's Day 2015 — "You Can't Stop Living Life Just Because You Might Be Dead"


(Image from Happy Holidays 2015)

You Can't Stop Living Life Just
Because You Might Be Dead

You can't stop living life [today]
just because you might
be dead [tomorrow].

-Paul Whiting
(a.k.a., Small All White in the Forest)
"I am no barrier to its sun; the light and I are as one!"

My Writing About Still Living Life Even Though You Might Be Dead: You can't stop living life just because you might be dead. And I intend the aforementioned statement in the most positive, and respectful, way possible—and without any disrespect for anyone who may been dealing with some kind of life-threatening health condition, or terminal illness, like I am. (The reader should know that I am HIV-positive with full-blown AIDS. And I have almost died on multiple occasions, due to multiple infections, but that was mostly before I started taking HIV medications, which greatly improved my health.) So, I wrote the above-mentioned statement when I realized that I wasn't really living life because I was so afraid dying. Thus, that was the place where I was coming from in giving this kind of flippant life advice. –Paul Whiting (written March 16th, 2015, revised August 25th, 2022 and revised April 17th, 2023)

My Poetic Notes:

The reason that I wrote this poem can be summed up with the following statement: I wrote this poem when I was worrying about dying (as I often do, since I am HIV-positive with full-blown AIDS) and I realized that I couldn't stop living life today just because I might be dead tomorrow!

And this poem was also published on my "Poet, Artist and Philosopher" and "Paul Whiting — A Creative Writer" blogs (please see the hyperlinks below for the blogs), since I feel that the message in this poem applies to the message I am trying to convey through "Poet, Artist and Philosopher" and "Paul Whiting — A Creative Writer."

This poem was written in Portland, Oregon.

-Paulee

https://poetartistandphilosopher.blogspot.com

https://paulwhitingwriting.blogspot.com

This "Small All White in the Forest" Post No. 188 was edited on May 5th, 2024.

"Poetry is using the fewest words possible in order to describe all that is possible to describe." –Paul Whiting [June 1st, 2022]