I exist as I am. That is enough - Walt Whitman

We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. So medicine, law, business, engineering... these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love... these are what we stay alive for.

The smallest sprout shows there is really no death;
And if ever there was, it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceas’d the moment life appear’d.

All goes onward and outward — nothing collapses;
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

We seem afraid of the natural forces. John Burroughs puts it well, says, if the American is only dry, he is not content to take a drink of pure cold water, but must put sugar into it, or a flavor. To me, these things — the things of which these are the type — are the prominent dangers in the future of our America. The exhilaration of such freedom — the going and coming — the being master of yourself and of the road! No one who is not a walker can begin to know it! Oh! the long, long walks, way into the nights! — in the after hours — sometimes lasting till two or three in the morning! The air, the stars, the moon, the water — what a fullness of inspiration they imparted! — what exhilaration! And there were the detours, too — wanderings off into the country out of the beaten path: I remember one place in Maryland in particular to which we would go. How splendid, above all, was the moon — the full moon, the half moon: and then the wonder, the delight, of the silences.