For weeks now I have been struggling with choices... some already made, and some splayed out in front of me like a filleted flounder. I see little iridescent, milky white bones facing all directions, and I can almost feel the panic as they catch in my throat.
I can let this panic take hold, or I can watch it pass by. If I let it slip from me, it will be replaced by nothingness. So unsure, all clouded vision, no perfect answer to my future. But this is the way. The Way. The principle of patience along my spiritual path maintains that I must also be patient with myself... patient with choices I've made that have brought me to a stone wall with no clear way around. An obstacle that blocks a beautiful sunset. A disappointment that keeps me treading water when I should have been moving forward, making progress.
But realistically, the only reason we want progress in our lives is so that we have new and constant things to distract us from dying. We are dying every day, some of us faster than others, and we want desperately to forget this certain end to our journey. But it is there, waiting diligently for us, as we struggle to blind ourselves with other activities. No matter how we struggle, we will all end up at the same spot, as death takes our hand and we vanish into nothingness. So we fear nothingness. It becomes just another reminder of our mortality and temporary status as a living creature.
But life, as we all know, isn't just about breathing and existing. It is about the time we share with others, and how that time and those memories become our legacy. We can panic, get caught up, choke and drown - or we can relax into the inevitability of our nothingness and accept that sometimes living means treading water until the next wave takes us. The wave might be big and we might be intimidated, or it might be small and not carry us very far at all. But all along the way, we have to trust that we are a tiny fish in a big ocean of dreams and possibilities, and our own milky white bones are magically strong in the face of adversity. The meat of our daily existence sometimes hides the exquisite brilliance of our skeleton.
Last night I sat watching a small, empty boat float right offshore, and there was a part of me that had to be restrained from jumping into the water and swimming out to it. I don't know what I would have done once I pulled myself into the vessel, other than rowing into oblivion with the stars lighting my way. The part of me that implemented restraint was the part that understood that what I found so beautiful about the boat was its emptiness... and its potential was more powerful than its captor's ambition.
