Asymptotic

Plato believed that we’d never understand anything around us

                because everything around us is the palest of illusions

                veiling their true definitions.

In which case, I’m screwed

                because I’m trying to understand everything around us:

                                the why things happen,

                                the why things are,

                                the why things change.

The questions I’m asking are asymptotic;

                I'll get closer and closer I’ll get to the answers I seek

                but I'll never really get there.

I’ve lived through a million unanswerable moments

                and asked a million impossible questions.

And yet—

                for some crazy reason,

                I’m still asking.

Maybe it’s my deluded naïveté,

                the relentless optimism that I can’t seem to relinquish.

I can’t understand the world,

                                but I can try.

And since I’m never going to fully grasp everything anyway,

I might as well benefit from looking.