For years I have been moving without arriving, and I feel that this sense of not arriving, this impossibility of arrival, this floating in nothingness, this emptiness, is the very experience that has given me love, peace and humility.

Along this path I have seen many questioning eyes wanting to know who knows. I have also seen minds and mouths full of certainty, pouring the wine and poison of what they know into these empty cups. I have even seen people intoxicated by the wine of knowledge, or made ill by its poison. Yet for me, in the end, being human means immersing oneself in the pleasure of going and never arriving: becoming lost somewhere in the land of wanting and not having, seeking and not reaching.

Perhaps the truth of our existence lies not in what we acquire and know, but in the way we choose to search for ourselves: accepting that over the years we will become filled with stories we have lived but that will never be told, with a destiny that silently embraces us, and with all the possible futures we imagine that will never arrive.

I do not know whether the fabric of my being has been woven from longing for memory or from longing for my aspirations, but I know that with both I can cross the sea of love and the sky of joy, and that is enough.

Between birth and death, being human for me means learning simultaneously to love and to lose. It means allowing both to flow through my being while I never arrive, never fully become, and never fully know—and yet, despite all these imperfections and impossibilities, the splendour of being human lies in being able to say yes to imagination, to love, and to live freely.

Aydin Areta