The Universe Does Not Explain Itself

The universe does not explain itself.

It burns,
it expands,
it buries its stars in darkness,
and still,
we ask it what everything means.

Perhaps that is the strangest thing about being human.

We are temporary arrangements of matter,
walking beneath ancient light,
inventing reasons to wake up
on a planet that never promised us anything.

And yet,
we love.

We name the stars.
We mourn the dead.
We build homes on a moving world
and call them permanent.

We look into another person's eyes
and search for something
that will outlive our bodies.

Maybe meaning is not hidden
somewhere beyond the galaxies.

Maybe we invented the question
because silence
was too vast to bear.

Or perhaps the universe
has been answering us all along,
not in words,
but in the brief existence
of everything we refuse to take for granted.

A tree grows without knowing
whether anyone will remember it.

The ocean returns to the shore
without asking if the shore deserves it.

And a human being,
knowing how easily everything disappears,
still reaches for another hand.

I wonder if that is wisdom.

Not discovering why the universe exists,
but learning how to exist
without demanding that it justify itself.

To accept that some doors
will never reveal what lies behind them.

That some people will leave
without becoming lessons.

That some suffering
will offer no beautiful explanation.

And that not every mystery
is an invitation to solve it.

Perhaps growing older
is learning to leave a few questions open
without allowing them
to consume the life around them.

The stars will continue burning
long after our arguments have turned to dust.

Our names will fade.
Our monuments will crumble.
Even the things we call eternal
may have their endings.

Still,
for this brief and impossible moment,
we are here.

Conscious enough to wonder.
Fragile enough to lose.
Alive enough to love.

And perhaps that is not an answer.

Perhaps it is something
more honest than one.

We may never discover
why the universe exists.

But we are part of it,
and for a little while,
the universe has found a way
to look at itself
and wonder.