A Defiance Against Nothingness
These days I think I owe my life to flowers that were left here by my mother.
Ain't that like them, giving life to me again. This life lived mostly underground.
Unknowing neither sight nor sound. Till reaching out up for sunlight,
just to be ripped out by the stem.
Sensing only now it's dying. Drying out then drowning blindly. Blooming forth its every colour. In the moments it has left. To share the space with simple living things. Infinitely suffering. But fighting off like all creation. The absence of itself.
— Hozier, First Time
These lyrics have been stuck in my head for days. I read them as an elegy about surviving grief and the will to live, expressed through an extended metaphor of a flower's life cycle.
The words locate my continued existence in something small and humble — "flowers left by my mother" — suggesting a parent's care and memory can gift life twice: once at birth, and again in the aftermath of loss, as a sustaining presence.
I lost my grandmother last month. A woman who may not have given birth to me, but who gave me life regardless. A stunning woman, whose laugh lit up the room. She would have loved to meet my future children, to watch me get married — or even see the lesser things, like me finally figuring out how to be a functional adult. She lives on within me, as I turn 27.
Quietly giving love without asking.
A seed "mostly underground," unaware of sight nor sound. But as soon as it finds light, it is "ripped out by the stem" — a stark depiction of vulnerability, and of the way hope can be met with harm. It mirrors human experience: when you reach for something better, circumstance or loss can uproot you.
Even so, the flower blooms forth its every colour in the moments it has left. Its struggle is not unique; it is the common condition of living things. A Buddhist echo — the recognition that suffering is universal, and so too is the reaching beyond it.
I am a human who recognizes the difficulty in living. I am grieving, and in that, I realize how short my time here is.
All creation fights "the absence of itself." The will to exist, pushing back against non-being. Life isn't just enduring suffering; it is an active, ongoing refusal to vanish. We are formed in darkness, damaged by the world, and only fully sense our mortality late — but in that awareness, we may bloom most vividly.
A defiance against nothingness.