What do you do when outside the snow is falling and you are trapped looking out a window at a world you cannot touch? The closest you can come is leaving hand prints on the glass. And if you were to leave, if you were to shatter the glass and breathe the frigid air, coating your lungs in ice, what then? Would being a part of that world make it any less cold? Or would every mark you made quickly be erased by the incessantly falling snow?

Outside the snow is falling, and I am looking out a window at a world I long to touch. No -- I want to do more than touch it. I want to claim it, steal it, burn my name into the sky. I say I want to give back. I want to leave the world better than I found it. But perhaps even my best intentions are selfishly motivated.

Maybe good deeds are only a shout into oblivion, a plea with immortality, a desperate scream to break the silence before the silence breaks us.

We want to be remembered. Is that so terrible a thing? Memories are our only defense against the ceaseless beating of time that wears away anything it touches. No one wants to disappear. We want to leave a mark even if that mark is a scar.

Maybe that is the source of our self-destructive tendencies. We chop and burn and mutilate the world, and the scars we leave are like memorials. They announce, "We were here! We did this!" We build up our empires knowing they will fall, but also knowing that the greatest of them will be remembered and that there is a kind of salvation in that.

As individuals, we have very little power to change the world. We are all trapped behind out own windows, hoping for the courage to break them and set ourselves free. I am no exception. I write this hoping it will crack the glass. I send it out in ones and zeros into cyberspace, that virtual place we have created where we can reimagine ourselves, remake ourselves. We can say and think and do anything we like and remain safe behind the anonymity it provides. More than anonymity, though, it provides hope. With so many internet sensations, it's easy to believe the path to our fifteen minutes of fame lies there. It's easy to convince ourselves that we will be seen, if only for a second, and finally the windows will break.

But I know -- I think we all know -- that all we can gain is a bigger cage, that we are and always will be trapped by something -- by a small town, by a reputation, by our families, by ourselves. We all know that we will be forgotten.

Names carved on a tombstone will fade; given enough time, even the tombstone will be eroded away, and our children will walk on our graves, unaware that the grass is fed, the soil enriched, by what was once living flesh. Our bodies return to the Earth, and life changes. It evolves; eventually it dies. And that's the way it should be.

One day the Earth will be swallowed by the sun. One day the sun will burn itself out. Even the stars are not infinite. And when we are gone and out world is gone and the light that warmed our world is gone, there will be no more books, no more memories. Our legacy will die with us.

That is the futility of immortality, the truth we turn away from every day because we do not know how to comprehend our own impermanence.

One day, on another world, a creature made of stardust -- just like us -- will gaze at the sky and see our sun, and that creature will not know that the light it sees comes from a star that has already died. One day, in another time, the matter and energy that came together to make us will come apart and reconverge and make something new.

Maybe vestiges of the past will cling to the atoms so that even as they recreate themselves, a part of them will remember what they used to be. Or maybe that is wishful thinking, my human denial refusing to accept my eventual end.

The only thing I know for certain is how little I know. What I do not know, I have to fill in with guesswork, with belief and faith. These are not things that come naturally to me. I like evidence. I like things that can be touched, counted and measured, but I also like the freedom to believe in the fantastic. Where knowledge fails me, I like to invent.

I am a storyteller. I am a weaver of words, an inventor and a liar. But sometimes words fail me. Sometimes I don't know how to say what I am trying to say.

It is difficult, sometimes, to handle the truth. Sometimes reality is so beautiful it blind us, or so terrible it makes us never want to look again. Stories are the same way. Stories are reflections of reality, a way of understanding the universe without going mad.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth. I wrote that story once. I told it from the point of view of Lilith, Adam's first wife. I showed it to my father; he said it was bitter and reeked of feminism. He was probably right. I am bitter. Suffice it to say that God and I are not currently on speaking terms. We used to be. I used to pray about everything and listen in vain for answers.

Looking back, it feels like I was never a believer, but I know I must have been once. There is something seductive about God. Despite the lack of evidence, I sometimes catch myself wanting to believe.

I don't want to believe in a man in the sky pulling strings. I don't want to believe in heaven or hell or miracles. What I want to believe is that unconditional love does exist, that somewhere there is a being who will love my faults and failures because they are a part of me and because this being -- he, she, it or whatever -- loves all of me just for what I am.

Unconditional love is a beautiful concept; it is an idea so beautiful it hurts.

But I don't believe that kind of love exists outside ourselves. It is not something we can find just by searching. We have to make it ourselves.

Self-hatred is a kind of cancer. Love is the only cure. But true love is not to be found in others. Others are flawed -- as are we. They love imperfectly, and we have to accept that.

For a long time, I didn't think my mother loved me. I understand now that she loves me the only way she knows how, and I love her the only way I know how. Maybe we both deserve better, but that is all we have to work with.

I understand that sometimes the hardest thing we have to do is look in the mirror and be ok with what we see. I'm not saying it's impossible to love yourself, only that it is very difficult.

I don't know how to do that yet -- how to love myself. I'm not sure I ever will. So I set impossible goals, and I hurt myself when I can't achieve the,. I have written my disappointments on my skin with a blade. I have watched the blood leak out of my broken skin, and the pain has been a lifeline, an anchor. I'm not saying it was a good thing; I'm not saying it was healthy. But sometimes you have to hold tight to anything you can to avoid being swept away.

I want to change the world; I want to see things, do things. I want to matter, but I am coming to realize that I am one among billions, that even the billions are only one world. We are one world orbiting one star in a universe where stars and worlds and possibilities are uncountable. I am minuscule, but if you think that makes me insignificant you've misunderstood me completely.

You see, I am a part of something. I am a piece in the vast, unknowable mystery of existence, and that makes me important beyond measure.

Outside, it is snowing, and we are looking out a window at a world we fear to touch. We are afraid to touch it because, whether we're aware of it or not, we know the truth. We know the walls and windows and cages we feel trapped in are our own constructions, that the only thing keeping us from the world is a barrier that we have built. We know that, hidden in our cells, there is power beyond imagining, and all we have to do to use it is act.

And we know that it is hopeless, that we will die and our children will die and the sun will swallow the Earth. We stand before our impending destruction, and we laugh in its face. All that death can do is kill us, and it certainly will one day. But now we are alive. There is warm blood in our veins and a world waiting to be changed. There are chances to seize and mistakes to make, and isn't it intoxicating just to be breathing? We are barely a moment; we are fleeting, evanescent. Our lives are here and then gone and then forgotten. But now, we are pieces of something magnificent. We are pieces of something utterly terrible and beautiful beyond understanding, and that is a gift.

Take it and run with it.