Imagine empires that exist only in the space between keyboards and fingertips. We are the storytellers that shape the future. We are creators that yearn to reach the sky with the legacies we leave behind. In the eyes of a star, we are nothing more than insignificant beings, our lives emerging then vanishing in the course of a single day. Our lives are nothing more than a brief speck among billions of flickering lights existing along a surface of rigid plates and endless seas. However, human existence is delicate. We are a dynamic network full of complexity and chaos. No matter how intuitive we are, I believe our minds are not intelligent enough to comprehend this delicacy.
 

Why is art such a strong form of expression? We often wonder why so many painters throughout history such as Edvard Munch and Vincent Van Gogh battled mental illnesses, yet have left behind such captivating masterpieces. We think how great musicians like Beethoven and Kurt Cobain suffered severe depression, yet their music is still appreciated long after they have passed away. Writers like Ernest Hemingway, Sylvia Plath, and Edgar Allan Poe attempted suicide and many ended up taking their own lives. Why do so many art forms come from a tortured soul?
 

We all have been worn down, chipped, torn apart by emotions, self-loathed, tossed into the depths of our lowest points. We all have felt broken and maybe in the pits of our deepest despair, we seek for ways to sew our hurt into something more tangible. We scramble to find words to explain our inner emotions or we transcribe sadness into melodies.
 

Perhaps actors find a deep passion for their occupation because they are presented the opportunity to step outside the walls of reality, even for just short while. They can unwrap themselves from the cocoons that bind them and become another person.
 

Street artists spend their nights plastering pasteups to walls as high as skyscrapers to express their strong political views or to display detailed imagery crafted from hours of careful examination only to have their work taken down and destroyed at break of dawn. They balance across bridges, over highways, staining underground subway stations, working in quick, discreet strokes. They acquire pseudonyms and strive to plaster their new identities over billboards, using art to take a swipe at controversial issues in society. The world is their canvas. One of the most famous graffiti artist goes by the name of Banksy. His identity has remained anonymous for decades although his spray-painted images have spread across newspaper headlines and have sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars in galleries. He is an activist who managed to create some of the most succinct and impactful art around the world.
 

Art is not confined in categories. It is not what we yearn to create. It is what we do create. It is the way we bring figments of our imagination into reality. Art has the power to start revolutions and stop wars. There are a little over seven billion people on this earth: that’s seven billion masterpieces woven throughout a lifetime, seven billion tales told on different tongues. It’s fascinating how we are all connected through stories. Art is the way we perceive the world. It could be an infinite variety of things, limited only by the ever-expanding universe of our minds. It is the beauty in the simple fact that there are seven billion beings each with different  mindsets yet able to relate with each other through the works they create.
 

We are sculpted from narrow bones and aging flesh, composed of a fragile skeleton clutching together pieces of our tattered composition. Yet we are more than fleeting ephemeral creatures. We are intricate beings capable of spinning thoughts into existence.
 

We are art.