minishorts.net

No belonging

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Sometimes we talk as if we're such millionaires, who own every thing we do, every result we create, every minute we have. But the truth cannot be further from the opposite, in essence, we are all poverty-stricken, what has happened passes us by fleetingly, becoming a part of the past, essentially nothing, and yet even that we tightly cling on, as if that nothingness can actually change our very beings at this very moment.

Of life even, when we talk about it, we speak so haughtily, as if we own our lives, as if we have rights to dictate what happens, as if we steer this possession to the results we create, that fleetingly touch our lives, and then is gone. The poets and sages have written about all of these through the ages, and yet stubbornly we refuse to learn what has been recorded, regarding every wisdom as a load of meaningless sound, but naught till our final breath do we realize the truth, that we didn't own our lives at all, instead our lives owned us. And then it dawns upon you upon that very last breath, that choice you finally have to make, is it going to be painful, or is it going to be that last beautiful experience you get to live before you pass on?

I wasn't nearly as touched as the passing of a near-stranger than I was by the leaves that swayed in the breeze. Or maybe it's just the ego in me, feigning wisdom by drawing strength from all those books on Zen knowledge. I can only try, and hope that one day when I return here I'll be able to pick up some bits of my past to help me make my choices in the present of that time.