transience

Everything in life is so transient – including grief.

When we lose someone or something that we hold as precious, it seems that life couldn’t go on – that the world itself has come to an end and that life has no meaning.

However, life, oblivious of the tumults in our perception of it, goes on and on… and amazing as it may be, we eventually overcome the grief.

All the pain and suffering – everything that we go through in our lives is so insignificant when compared to the size of our universe. As Carl Segan wrote, "We are like butterflies that flutter for a day and think it as eternity". Yet, this day is all we have – and what we feel is all we have to show that anything even exists .. outside of us.

I can only wonder at our resistance to change. Everything changes. We change. And yet, the moment we are aware of something changing, we resist it.

Is there anything wrong with resisting change? I don’t know. I don’t think that is the right question to ask. This is not a moral issue of right and wrong. Without coherence, all would be in chaos, and how can you have coherence without resistance to everything that tries to nullify that coherence.

Take the physical example if the earth decided to lose it’s coherence… Just like that, one morning, eastern standard time, the pieces split and fall away into space … smaller and smaller and smaller … until you are all that there is left to show that it ever even existed … ah! And yes, the peck of dust beneath your sneakers – conclusive evidence ….

Weird imagery … grief will do that to you. Sometimes, oftentimes, we are sad about things that we do not even wish to acknowledge. Just a bitter sweet feeling somewhere between the lungs and the intestines … approximately where your solar plexus is … a death point I am told if you are well versed in martial arts.

Well, there it is – that pain that is almost there and not quite. That thought that is almost there but not quite … eventually, someday you’ll have a dream about it or, perhaps a nightmare … you’ll wake up in the middle of the night, finally acknowledging the hurt, have a glass of water, wipe your forehead maybe, and go back to bed.

For a while, you’ll wonder at what you had done, how stupid you were not to realize, be glad that you have finally realized, and finally drowse off listening to the silence within … and the sound of the ceiling fan, water dripping from a leaky faucet, a cricket, a termite in the woodwork, or perhaps the sound of someone breathing.

The morning sun will be a little sallow. As you open your eyes and look at the curtain, you’ll remember for a moment … feel a small shiver go up and down your spine, feel that the feet are a little cold perhaps, and throw off the quilt, get up, get on with life and forget …
Forget and forever … forget forever … forget for ever.

And yet, in your having thought, and in your having grieved, something comes into existence, something ethereal and not quite. Physical too. And that remains. Long after you are gone and time itself has lost it’s sense of continuity, somewhere, built into the very fabric of the universe, remains a thought and a feeling – a tribute to the moment that you took so long to understand and acknowledge … and there for eternity to pass it by.