To prove we exist we must move & feel together.
What keeps us from disappearing? The heart and the imagination. What keeps us from merely surviving? Each other.
To stay tethered to this world in body, mind, and heart, we need to believe and be able to generate hope. To find a purpose and pick our heads up and find joy and solace, we need to be seen and heard.
If we have these things we can prove to ourselves that we exist. We have proof that we are not disappearing, we have proof that what we touch and feel is real, and feels us.
When we can remember to look into the eyes of our loved ones, to meet the eyes of a stranger on the road, to stare into the blank blue expanse above us, we prove their existence, and we in turn exist.
But we must pursue more, and maintain the pursuit of the existence of each other. We must make a habit of proving existence because the proof is never ending, it is forever evolving. If we cease to exist, it will be because we stopped looking for each other.
But we must also understand that there are different degrees of existence. Those moments we feel most alive, heart swelling beyond capacity as if we might burst into flames, and those moments of sheer pain and grief when we fear we may implode, and all the moments of low and high intensity in between all of these fluctuations provide a measure of our existence at each moment.
We can't be joyous and exuberant and ecstatic at all times, just as we cannot be devastated or furious or lost always. But the balance of these intensities, the ladder of existence we ascend and descend, this also provides proof of our existence, the ebb and flow of intensity tells us we are alive and feeling and provides a potential connection to each other as we move up and down our own ladder of existence.
So we need the heart and the imagination, we need each other, and we need a willingness to prove we exist. But also, very simply, to prove we exist we must keep moving and feeling together, and looking and listening for each other.