Hi,
I liked your piece. Dramatic. You force us to think through life connections, to want to think through the connections. You pull us in, and that is what good writing should do.
That being said, I would like you to consider a few things:
One is simple. You end the sixth sentence in the second paragraph with "would." Should that be "world?"
My last comments may be my fault, but I'm not sure. I liked everything up until the middle of the second paragraph, starting with the sentences "Even when the world is filled with malintent, the people in it are not. But the world is loud and people work themselves to the bone just to keep up."
The logic and correlations you so plainly used earlier seem to fall apart for me. You seem to follow the same nuanced writing, but what is the world, if not people? I think only people, not the rest of nature are capable of malintent. Therefore, to say the world is full of malintent, but the people are not strikes me as a non sequitur. Where else would malintent originate?
You then introduce an idea of the world being loud; I agree. But, I don't understand what loudness has to do with fomenting people to work themselves to keep up. What are they keeping up with?
Finally, your last sentence hit me odd, despair. I was taken with what I considered the insight of your whole piece up until this point. You made me think about how there's so much story in the people we don't see, the nature we don't observe, the tracks we take, the dreams we have, the darkness we all walk through together. You then reassure me that when the lights go out, we're all in it together. That felt somewhat reassuring to know that we are experiencing life and should be supporting our fellow sojourners. But, that isn't what happens. In the last sentence, you seem to want to highlight some greed that resides in us, something that morphs into a realization that our beauty, whatever beauty we have, is fleeting in our journey. I feel like the rug was pulled out from under me regarding everything you said earlier.
If I got that right, then be it my preference that I like a happier ending after you made me think of all that I hadn't seen, things that made me regret, but then feel some relief. I'd rather not end it in despair that there is no beauty in anything that you said earlier. After all, if it is all about fleeting beauty, then what is the point?
There you have it. Only you know what you wanted to achieve. If you got what you wanted, great. If you wanted me (the generic reader) to feel something different from what I understood, you may want to consider your wording. Regardless, it is all your choice.
Keep writing,
David Burke |