I believe that life is a poem.

    Why is life a poem? Poetry is everywhere in life. Living your life is like composing a poem, but it takes a lifetime to perfect. Every word comes from your every experience, happy or sad, up or down. Every delight shines as brightly as sunlight. Every grief is as still as moonlight. Either delight or grief can become poetry since you can see it from the view of poetry. Living still is a joyful part of the poem, which is as joyful as the blooming blossom. Resting in peace is a profound part of the poem, which is as profound as the flowers gone with the wind.

    Nelson Mandela, who led South Africa’s transition from white-minority rule, passed away on December 6, 2013. He wrote a great poem. His life was full of setbacks and torture, but there was unyielding hope and enduring persistence. All those in his life, no matter how sweet or how bitter, made up his graceful poem. He never surrendered, he continued to perfect it. In some sense, he enjoyed his life just like appreciated poetry. Mandela has finished his poem which touched our lives in deeply personal ways. He has said his goodbyes, but his poem will be recited forever instead of perishing from the earth.

    I take Mandela’s life as an example to explain that life could be a poem, but you need to discover the way it appears as a poem. For example, your past might have become a distant memory, but it has been actually written down on what we call life.

    And your poem generally comes into being, though it is not completed. Life starts at birth, ends at death. Life can also endure as a poem that can be cited, especially in a world that insists on changing. Different affairs in your life make the poem colorful.

    How could ordinary people write graceful poems? As Mr. Zuma said, “What made Nelson Mandela great was precisely what made him human. We saw in him what we seek in ourselves.” So everyone can have a poem like Mandela’s.

    Maybe you aren’t a poet, but life still is a poem which you will have to hand on in the end. If you can see everything in your life as something that will not appear again, why can’t life be a poem? How can we perfect the poem? You cannot be another Mandela, but you can have your poem — a graceful poem.

    The best way to perfect your poem is to focus on what floats in and out of your life and keeps on living without so many complaints. There are a lot of what we call trifles, but maybe they exactly comprise our poems.

    Those choices we make every day are what define our poems in our life, so you need to be your own poet, your own boss. If you have perfected your poem, you will have no regrets when you look back on the world. The time eventually comes when you must say goodbye to the world you know, but you can smile with great relief that you’ve never had, because you know that truth that life is a poem and you own a graceful one.

    Life is a poem, and we know what it means.