Zeitgeist

For Codey

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1. Codey —
2.  
3. I find myself looking up to you,
4. Though we’ve never met face-to-face.
5. Not hero worship, not pity, just respect.
6. But this isn’t about respect.
7.  
8. I didn’t know you all that well.
9. I admit, I’m not very social.
10. I regret that we didn’t speak more often.
11. But this isn’t about regret.
12.  
13. This is about the people you touched
14. In what appeared to be an aggressive campaign
15. Against insecurity and doubt.
16.  
17. A wave of unrelenting optimism,
18. Words of love, hope, and resistance
19. Borne without pause across cultures and continents,
20. Relentlessly gentle, stubbornly accommodating.
21.  
22. You built a world where the things
23. That we hid from even ourselves
24. Were held up and celebrated;
25. Differences on display as things of beauty.
26.  
27. You built a collection of art and artists
28. That showcased humanity, its glory and grotesquery,
29. And broadcast that collection to the world.
30. And here’s the amazing part:
31. The world read, listened, looked.
32.  
33. So…why? Why reach out to us?
34. Strangers, and in the strangest sense.
35. Not for fame, we know;
36. You insisted that it wasn’t about you.
37.  
38. I get the feeling that if I asked,
39. You’d say something like
40. “I just want everyone to feel like they belong,”
41. Or, “It felt like the right thing to do.”
42.  
43. And that makes all the difference.
44.  
45. Thanks.