Essay on Writing Poetry for Strangers

Writing Poems in Gastown - Feb 2026

The year is 2026, the dawn of the Artificial Intelligence age, the early scintillations of twilight that just touch the horizon, revealing the divided line between Heaven and Earth. On this line, balances humanity.

  Now more than ever, the question 'What does it mean to be a human being?' is being asked, perhaps as a response to advances in technology blurring the lines more and more. The external world, which almost everyone has access to via social media and news, seems fractured, cohesive, abstract, tragic and sadly, prevalently, evil (with the release of the Epstein files leaving a bitter feeling, in each human heart - that such evils, often disregarded as myth, turn out to be true and infinitely worse)

  Yet is the internal world any better? Any more cohesive? At times it seems a complex mess of emotions, at times it seams a solitary life raft in a vast ocean of indifference, at times, and at the best of times, it seems calm and focused on its goals. That oscillation between states perhaps, is the most human thing about us, that inner turmoil that rises and bubbles to the surface like molten lava, and just as swiftly solidifies and becomes a rich, idyllic island. It was mid-2024, when I felt that state of indifference, seemingly floating along the well carved eddies of life. Asking the very same question I was asking today. What does it mean to be human? Shakespeare once said,

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles

And by opposing end them.

  Perhaps the greatest thing that took me from the boundless ocean to the shores of the island of life, was action - through action, the truth was revealed. In the action of writing, the answer to the question I had been asking for so long was revealed, but only through the action of writing. As my pen danced and pirouetted across the page, as it does now, the mind felt that reverent calm that carries us out of the realm of space time into the platonic realm of forms, into the Eternal Beauty within every human soul. Certainly in the heights of my creative endeavour, I seem to lose sight of myself and become the very words, the very letters that appear on the page. For a brief moment, I forget myself. Emerson, who believed in the concept of a universal mind, described it aptly when he said, 'Of the Universal mind each individual man is one more incarnation'. At the time of his writing it can fall into speculation, but today, it is hard to refute. The very same technology that is giving us access to all the information available to man, is at the same time making us uninterested or indifferent towards it. The great irony, that would make even Socrates laugh, is that the technology humans created to guide us on the perilous sea, is plunging us further and further adrift from land.

  How then did my 'grasping of the truth' through action lead me to the streets of Vancouver, BC, typewriter in hand, ready to face the 'slings and arrows of outrageous fortune'? Well an entire novel would be needed to explain that series of events, akin to Moses leading the Israelites out into the desert. The better question to ask is, what have I learnt from the experience? What have I learnt about my own soul, my own place in this world? By conversing with multitudes of strangers, trying to get to the very essence of what makes a human being, the overwhelming lesson seems to be we are what we love. "A mind might ponder its thoughts for ages and not gain self-knowledge as the passion of love shall teach it in a day' (Emerson, Essays). How people's eyes light up when they're talking about something they love, be it another person, a pet, an activity, a piece of art, a book, a song. And at the same time, when they share their sorrows with me, you can tell that they hurt from a profound love in their souls. And yet they go on, and yet they choose to meet a stranger and share their story. And isn't that the heroic side of us, as Nietzsche said, what makes us heroic is confronting simultaneously our supreme suffering and our supreme hope. In the depths of despair one often finds an unbreakable spirit, a resilience beyond their previous capacity. And so I find some meaning in the suffering, I find my 'why?'

 And in that search, there is all that is human, the overwhelming emotion, the spite, the pain, the joy, the laughter. The perfect laughter! And so, in our love, we stand apart from the artifical constructions, for they are unable to love, and in that, there is an infinitude of meaning.

 So there, in this age of technology, I choose humanity. I choose the capricious sands of the vast shores of the human soul. Such is my privilege, such is my burden. A computer doesn't bleed when it spits out its carefully arranged, algorithmically perfect soliloquies - a human does. The angel of death sits on every word, and that makes all the difference.