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Sometimes I stop for a moment. Pause. And then I notice the way the sun illuminates all the little particles in the air. And they just waft by. Suspended. Yet moving. I wave my arm and those particles scatter. I make them move. I shape their journey. Or I think I do.
There are so many choices we make. With experience, wisdom often makes those choices quicker, easier, somehow more manageable no matter the outcome. And they lead to other choices. And so on. Life is meaningful. And all my proverbial ducks line up mostly the way I want.
It's pure arrogance.
And then. Bang. Randomness. Something so sickenly random happens. No reason. Something unbelievable. Like an aneurysm. A head-on collision. Cancer. Some other bullshit thing.
And then there's no choice. No way to shift the particles the way I want. The sun still illuminates it all but everything looks different now. Particles wafting. Particles drifting. Shockwaves interfere with everything. And I don't know where things go anymore and I don't know where they come from anymore. All the way up to the stars.
A year has passed now. I continue to search for perspective but I don't still feel this way. Still is the key word here; the search isn't so turbulent right now. At least not for me. Yet talking with a friend a few days ago, for her it is: particles overwhelming, particles everywhere. I listened to her carefully. I felt her confusion and agreed: it doesn't make sense. At some point in the conversation she pleaded, "What am I supposed to learn from this?"
That's it. That's the question. Right there. We all must keep asking that question. Ask yourself. Ask those you trust. And keep sorting it out. Little by little. Day by day. Friends with friends. Conversation by conversation. Because at least together among those drifting particles illuminated by the sun, both beautiful and infuriating, we will see each other and know that at least there's that: we are not alone in all of this.
"Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards." ~V.S. Law
3 comments:
I think after a while, even if we never do figure out meaning and purpose, we learn to live with the randomness.
Those particles that waft in the sunlight make a great image, one that mostly makes happy thoughts for me. But they make a good analogy for something that is so easy to effect, yet so difficult to control. Too many variables, too many little perturbations.
That's' a lesson worth learning.
Thank you.
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