I am sitting at a desk, staring at a screen. Across my desk, I see assorted items with the color blue: push pins, notebooks, sticky notes, and words written on a dry erase board written in blue marker. None of these have significance, none of them matter.

My eyes are blue from the pure tears I am crying. They do not matter either. You would think something like tears would hold a resemblance to something far more symbolic, but I hate to tell you, they don’t. Well maybe they do, but I just do not know what they symbolize quite yet.

I open the cloth curtains and I run the material through my fingers. I make sure to feel them before I open them to view the vast environment outside of my fourth-floor room. The sky is blue. But the sky is not a bright, baby blue. It is dark, not heroic of a win against the darkness but rather a sinister blue that you picture on stormy skies. Yes, that is the shade of blue my eyes are capturing. And let me tell you, they are capturing the tone, the shade, and the lack of saturation the sky is encompassed by. I did not think blue was an important color, nor did I think it held importance in my life, but now I am reconsidering.

I wipe away my tears, I can tell my face is blotchy from crying. I don’t know why I was crying, but I wish I knew. I put on my weathered baseball cap and I head outside to get a better glimpse and understanding for my curiosity in the sky. I feel like the children who search for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but for me, at least this time, there is not a rainbow and surely there is not a pot of gold.

I am adventuring now and to completely honest, I am not sure where I am. I see a leaf lying on the ground. It catches my eye and I reach down, both hands on each knee and I pick it up. It is brittle but the colors of fall it contains are too aesthetic to ignore. I find my stomach turn in a comforting, but uncomforting way. I do not understand why, but I allow the feeling to continue.

I am now on a path in the woods and the sounds around me are obsolete and the only sound I can hear is my breathing. I am focusing in on this sound and am especially interested in the science of my organs. It is a miracle really that each organ just operates. They just do.

I reach in my pocket and to my discovery, find that the leaf I have taken as my own has been crumpled. “Damn.” I had actually planned on pressing it in a frame. It was that beautiful.

I look up and find that I am just where I started. I did not intend on even going on this walk let alone discovering the two things I had. I had initially gone out to figure out my interest in the sky. I did not accomplish that in the slightest.

Perhaps the few pieces I had discovered became a relentless tool I needed in order to realize a much deeper and much more important lesson learned.

What the leaf represented:

Although I found a strange but strong comfort in the mysteriously sad sky, the leaf became a reminder that although sadness is easily acquired, the beauty in the world surrounding, is much more beautiful no matter how hard you try to refute it. It is astonishing the beauty one can acknowledge once they realize that the dark shade of blue hovering over them is not a constant they have to accept. Although I found myself touching the crumbled piece of beauty in my pocket, gave me the epiphany to realize that nothing perfect will stay, no matter how hard you try. The dark blue sky will stay as a constant if you allow it, but there will also be sunny days with golden auburn leaves to contradict the dark room you are sheltering yourself in.

What the organs of our bodies represented:

“They just do.” Perhaps that statement in itself is enough to represent the whole of what the organs represent. Rather than the analyzation of the blue on the dry erase board, and the blue in the sky, we should just do. Just be. Just live. The analyzation of something sad is not something healthy nor is it something easy to rid yourself of. I sympathize for those stuck in that rut of aloofness from society. I have been there, I am there. But sometimes, in the hardest of moments, the quiet repercussions of sadness will find you, they will eat you alive. But unbelievably, your organs still “just do,” and maybe while you are waiting for the storm to pass, so should you.

I understand the difficulty of this all. But the beauty of it all is that only we can decide how to return to a peaceful and much more content state of mine. No one can force us and no one can tell us what can or cannot make us feel better. I have been on the side of the blue sky for long periods of time, but let me tell you from experience, the grass is MUCH greener on the other side if only we can join together and cross the terrain of travesty towards a better tomorrow.