Consider the Hummingbird

     The essay "Joyas Voladoars" explores the beauty of insignificant lives such as common hummingbirds and the inevitable mortality of humans. Its ending comes off as depressing and pessimistic ("You can brick up your heart as stout and tight and hard and cold and impregnable as you possibly can and down it comes in an instant"), but I think it was written with the intent of having readers appreciate their lives. I liked that it incorporated and began with facts, leading you to believe the essay's about hummingbirds, and then later revealing a darker message. One of my favorite lines was "When young we think there will come one person who will savor and sustain us always; when we are older we know this is the dream of a child, that all hearts finally are bruised and scarred, scored and torn, repaired by time and will, patched by force of character, yet fragile and rickety forevermore, no matter how ferocious the defense and how many bricks you bring to the wall."