Hello, and welcome back to Practicing Human, the podcast where every day we're getting

a little better at life.

I'm your host, Corey Muscara, and in today's episode, I'm going to talk about if everything

is for nothing, why do anything?

More to come on that in a moment, first let's settle in together with the sound of the

bells.

So I'd like to start this episode off with a poem by Lee Young Lee.

The poem is called So Wear Dust, and the dust is pointing to the reductionistic view

that perhaps we're nothing more than star dust floating around in the universe.

And so we start with that perspective.

The poem goes like this, So Wear Dust.

In the meantime, my wife and I make the bed, holding opposite edges of the sheet, we raise

it, billowing, then pull it tight, measuring by eye as it falls into alignment between us.

We tug, fold, tuck, and if I'm lucky, she'll remember a recent dream and tell me.

One day, we'll lie down and knock it up.

One day, all we guard will be surrendered.

Until then, we'll go on learning to recognize what we love and what it takes to tend to

what isn't for our having.

So often, fear has led me to abandon what I know I must relinquish in time.

But for the moment, I'll listen to her dream, and she to mine, our mutual hearing, calling

more and more detail into the light of a joint and fragile keeping.

I really like that last line, our mutual hearing, calling more and more detail into the light

...