Voices, or Three Perspectives on Life

There is never a day when I do not think of what is to come,
For I see things, and yet hear another, and yet again,
speak of another.
There are three perspectives: the first, an optimistic voice,
Cries out, “Change! Change must take place!”
She is the voice of youthful idealism, in all her glory
and her uncorrupted values - she lives on in spite of
The evils of the world today.
The second perspective, the pessimist, says
“This life - it is not worth living:
Put an end to the sorrow and move on to the next!”
This is the voice of desperation personified:
A voice that lies deep within each living being,
One that only few heed, and some hear clearly,
because of its dangerous power to end a life.
The third perspective is the most powerful of all,
The most dangerous, and yet the easiest to heed:
“Stop caring.”
Two words could not get more powerful -
You do not move forward, and yet
You do not move back as well:
You just stay put, not caring for the world,
Not living a life but not ending it either.
It is a limbo within the world - a means of being stuck
Where you should not be.
Each of the two voices is a destination, and yet
With this one, you only stay lost,
Never to be found unless you want to be.
There is never a day when I do not hear these three
arguing amongst each other -
I say the first, hear the second, and see the third,
And I know not which one to heed.
For the first, while it is positive, is idealistic:
There is no room for idealism in the real world.
The second is cynical, and pessimistic,
And I wish to be neither.
The third, the most tempting, and the easiest to heed,
I recognize the danger: life should move,
One way or another, and not stop where it is.
People say the trick to the voices
Is to find a balance between the three,
and yet I find these words lost in translation
For the balance is yet to be reached
without damaging consequences to follow.