A Soliloquy On Sadness

Like a dream, at times, I faintly recall
The shade of emotion they used to call
Sadness - a nostalgic pang from the past!
I try and remember when I felt it last.

I passed by a beggar, and almost forgot
To give the routine coin, and a passing thought
To world poverty and hunger, how society should be,
I went back to planning how my evening would be.

Again, when I tried to save the car crash victim
Who was on his way home when the car hit him,
I was the one who had to break the news to his wife.
I dismissed that too as a part of life.

I saw someone dying, and found myself thinking
What are we but flashes of stardust, blinking
In eternal chaos; in the greater context;
We're here one moment, and we're not, the next.

I did not feel sad when I had that fight,
With my best friend; haven't spoken since that night.
I confess that I miss her, her laughter, her voice
But isn't friendship, like love, in the end, a choice?

Everything that happens must have an explanation,
Emotions are simply exaggerations
Of an inner conflict, a misplaced standing
Of intellectual weakness; a misunderstanding.

With cold bricks of logic and reason I've built
A wall of detachment over emotions killed,
To ensure such fickle faults don't hold sway
A wall to keep human frailties at bay.

Yet, now when I consider all the implications,
A twinge of uneasiness with my calculations.
In fighting with myself, have I lost or won.
If being mechanical is perfect, what is being human?

If man becomes machine, it marks the trend
Of an inevitable march to an evolutionary end,
Where logic paints the whole world with the same brush
Since it was our capacity to feel that differentiated us;

To acknowledge loss. I'd like to believe
I have not yet lost my human capacity to grieve.
I will no longer stop myself from feeling pain,
I want to be able to be sad again.