The vastness of time [is] a pin’s point in eternity. All is petty, inconstant, and perishable…show true love to the fellow mortals with whom destiny has surrounded you. –Marcus Aurelius
I will never cease to be fascinated by the duality of existence—the Yin-yang, the life-death, the pain-joy of it all. In a little fishing village in Mexico (no, I am not revealing the location—they don’t need any more gringos) I recently met some especially beautiful people and thought a great deal about what we give up in order to get.
For ten weeks every year, one of my many sisters gives up motorized roads for meeting friends along the walking path. She gives up reliable electricity for the certainty of moonlight over the ocean.
And when she has to return to this other world her tears fill the salt jar.
It’s the tiny, enormous things that make a life worth living. Things like a touch of cinnamon in the morning coffee or making time for tea in the afternoon. Things like just doing the dishes for a new mother instead of asking her what she needs. Letting the person ahead of you in the grocery store, not knowing why they have that look on their face, but seeing that they have that look on their face; maybe they just have to pee but maybe their love is waiting at home for the soup in the cart and the relief of seeing them come through the door knowing that time is being eaten by cancer and chaos.
Standing for a moment in the sun and saying thank you instead of walking out into the light and bitching that it’s too hot.
Sweeping a dirt floor—an offering to the demons of bedlam.
Psychic pain is mollified in memory;
knowing that the moments of this day will be kneaded into remembrance is all we can ask. So we give the greatest gift we can to those we love…our selves. And it throws a bone to the gods of entropy.
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