People are valuable because they exist

[P]eople are valuable because they exist, not because they are productive. You are valuable because you carry the collective hopes of humanity, because you are your ancestors’ wildest dreams come true, because you breathe and eat and take up space.

You are valuable because you are, not because you do.

Hugh Hollowell – Life is so Beautiful, April 6th 2023

Live Oak, with Moss – VI

What think you I have taken my pen to record?

Not the battle-ship, perfect-model’d, majestic, that I saw to day arrive in the offing, under full sail,

Nor the splendors of the past day–nor the splendors of the night that envelopes me–Nor the glory and growth of the great city spread around me,

But the two men I saw to-day on the pier, parting the parting of dear friends.

The one to remain hung on the other’s neck and passionately kissed him–white the one to depart tightly prest the one to remain in his arms.

Live Oak, with Moss; VI. by Walt Whitman