We tell ourselves lies to endure

We tell ourselves tales to endure. Or else, 
we endure only to tell ourselves tales. 
Religion, the eldest, stands firmest of all— 
answering what would dangle in the void: 
"Why here? Where next? What waits if we err?"
But what if it, too, is just an ark, 
a brittle vessel shielding us from chaos— 
a wooden crate adrift on a sea of naught? 

We grip faith like the drowning clutch splintered planks. 
Even when told it’s mere lumber, we swear 
it’s charmed. Without it — emptiness. 
An endless, gelid ocean of the unknown. 
And who would stare into that? Who’d confess 
that past our rites and prayers lies only hush? 

Yet here’s the grandest paradox: we name 
faith "solace," when it mirrors our dread 
of the real. We forge gods not from their being, 
but from the ache of their lack. And when reason 
pries our myths apart, we spin new ones. 
For the alternative is solitude. 
Without Gods, we’re just drenched creatures, 
trembling, unsure if the rain will cease. 

And is this not how we still live? 

No — not quite. The gelid sea of naught 
proves a realm where time and space dissolve, 
where fear of loneliness yields to indifference — 
a void no perception pierces. 
We don’t craft gods from fear of being alone, 
but from love of life. Even when we stuff it 
with fables, they hold weight — and that weight 
is not shaped by terror of going mad. 

No, it’s forged by a fever to prize 
what has, against all odds, existed — 
if only in thought. And what lies beyond? -
No one cares. 

This is how we live — loving, dreaming, 
plunging into grief or rapture, where gods 
reply to our wails with echoes: 
"Don’t halt. Keep going. Keep going."