know thyself by April Li

know thyself

before athens became a metropolis of crumbling stone

the sages walked through the marble temples of greece and said,

“know thyself.”

2300 years after those words fell with the temple of apollo

and i still don’t know how.

people spend their whole lives in the pursuit of knowing;

to know themselves

to know others

to know every infinitesimal mechanism in the turning of the earth’s gears.

i want to know, i do.

i want to know what you’re thinking

when you look at me like that,

and i want to know the pounding

of your chest underneath my hand.

i want to know what the sand feels like

at the edge of the mediterranean sea,

and i want to see what the world looks like

from the top of mount kilimanjaro.

i want to understand my heart and why it hurts sometimes when i stand in the middle of a rainstorm in august. i want to know if i will ever escape my mind and i want to know if i will live past 25. i want to know every single stone on the path that leads me from here to when i see god face-to-face. i want to know who i am underneath who i think i am, and i want to know who i want to be underneath who i think i want to be.

i want to know

like samson wanted to know delilah,

like icarus wanted to know the sun,

like john lennon wanted to know peace.

i want to know

like the waves want to know the shore,

like the sun wants to know the tip of the mountains

as it goes to sleep.

i want to know

like monet knew his lilies,

like he knew every tiny stroke of color

underneath his brush.

i want to know

like the composer knows the notes

he hangs on the staff,

like the piano player knows every sound that

utters from the keys underneath his fingertips

before he presses them.

yeah,

i want to know but,

in the end delilah cut samson’s hair and,

icarus was burned by the sun and,

john was murdered by a warm gun and,

the waves are always pulled back into the deep and,

the mountains wake up every morning alone and,

monet could no longer see the colors he was painting and,

beethoven could no longer hear the notes he was playing and,

in the end,

socrates had to drink the poison until it climbed to his heart.

and samson never did know delilah,

and icarus never did know the sun,

and lennon never did know peace,

and the waves never do know the shore,

and the sun never does know the mountains,

and monet never did know the true hues on his canvas after 1905,

and beethoven never did know the true sound of his sonatas after 1798.

but maybe the point wasn’t in knowing delilah or the sun.

maybe it was in knowing god’s power

or the feel of the wind breezing through mechanical wings

or the unison of seven billion people singing “imagine”

or the hope of reaching for the sand a million times over

or the anticipation of meeting the mountain every night.

monet finished the grandes décorations of his beloved water lilies.

beethoven completed his musical masterpiece symphony no. 9.

socrates knew that he knew nothing.

and maybe,

just like everybody else,

i will spend my whole life searching for this

knowing of myself.

and maybe,

just like everybody else,

i will never know if i know myself.

but what i will know is this:

the way the sun feels on my skin and

the ripples when i dip my toe in the lake and

feeling on top of the world when i breathe fresh mountain air.

what i will know is this:

the joys of loving and

the sorrows of losing and

the happiness of living.