To my weary friends,
Your trials without end,
I wish to send you solace.

Society fails many.
Many die, some by suicide,
And the remnants are muck:
Corrupted and materialistic,
Base and hedonistic.
Yet within the dark bile,
Within its lukewarm core,
Diamonds can form:
Luminescent and pure.
Their bright minds fight for more:
A better world,
"The only thing worth fighting for,"
But they never see it through.
They cannot, I tell you.
The brightest simply shine.
They pray and hope and fight and die,
In their writings, in their art,
You see this coursing vein
Within it all --
In the pages of Karamazov,
In Van Gogh's shining stars.
It is this self-aware entity,
Pondering its own incredulity,
That screams to the sky
On so many sleepless nights:
"Greatness is doomed!
Society is static!
Dreams are but dreams!
Humanity automatic!"

Oh, and how these diamonds form!
Under such pressures and trials.
A life of constant disappointment
Where you only wish to better the world,
Yet the world pays you no mind,
And if you are noticed
It does with you what it wants:
You are slandered and trashed,
They ban your books,
They burn your paintings,
Then teach children about you,
Centuries from your death,
Some skewed version of your vision --
Something they've invented.
And there you were,
Wishing that hunger,
Wishing that war,
Wishing that strife and prejudice,
Were no more.
Oh, and you learned how hopeless this was.
Your infernous, naïve passion folded
Into a glowing ember.
For you have learned,
You wise, weary diamond,
That the ruler of man
Is his own nature:
For every advancement
Someone learns how to exploit it,
And all our theories,
All our lifelong efforts,
Inherited from diamonds before,
Will amount to nothing;
You will die only to pass the torch.

So,
How does a truly aware mind
Find solace with its life?
How can you sleep at night
With so much agony in the world?
How can you come to terms
With your own endless futility?
Oh, the timelessness of these questions.
Do not be dismayed, my friend:
I know how it feels to suffer,
To writhe on restless nights,
For decades,
And quietly cry
To the midnight sky.
We diamonds, we must struggle --
That is what makes us.
And imagine:
If there was no pain and hardship,
Our breed wouldn't exist!
We're byproducts, you know.
The world we wish for has no place for us,
So should we wish for it at all?
Should we end the lineage of diamonds,
For a world free of pain?
What sort of people would live there?
Docile, bright, kind,
Yet there must be something lost.
Yes, indeed there is
Within the darkness and suffering,
The abyss that we face,
We gain something --
Something infinitely valuable,
And only we know of it.

It is here that we learn
That even a completely different society
Would be relatively the same.
So tell me, diamonds timeless,
Why should I live?
To fall in love?
To travel the world?
To learn all I can?
I'll tell you,
You must live
So that you can learn
How to enjoy life
In the face of its ceaseless woes.
You must step over it,
And experience something beautiful:
Hold your lover's hand;
Walk barefoot in the snow;
Lie down in the sunshine --
You will find simple pleasures.
You will want to find more.
And all those years of worry,
Spent hurrying about
Trying to fight for something more,
Will fade into obscurity
As you, with your brilliant mind
Live for yourself some lovely life,
And if they come to take you away --
If you are burned at the stake:
Feel your searing skin,
Then swallow the flame,
For the secret is yours.
Laugh at it all
Laugh away