We all come and go the same way. We have no knowledge of where we have come from or where we are going. It is only the interim we are aware of, the consciousness, that we term life. Life is a flicker between the darkness of the womb and the darkness of the tomb and in this flickered existence we need to live and love and make it worthwhile. Indeed some of us are born under better circumstances that facilitate our existence and others under less felicitous circumstances where they need to build a life of their own and justify their existence. There are also drifters who take life as it comes with no volition of their own.
Whatever it is, we all come with a particular trajectory of life and our journey leads us to our destiny. Life is not a linear expression. There is no pattern to life, no predictability, no blue print we can turn to. What we consciously know is the present and every moment needs o be lived wholeheartedly with enthusiasm and compassion. No life has ever been simple, we will be beset by tragedies and unforeseen accidents, we will have anxious moments and endless grief. There will be fortuitous moments when we survive tragedy and remember our trauma and pain and offer prayers of gratitude.
There will also be joyous occasions when life becomes celebratory Life’s cruelties and joys are random. We cherish things precisely because they cannot last; its their frailty that adds sweetness to their beauty. But nothing is really lost, everything comes back in a grand revival with renewed exuberance. The trees shed their old leaves and new leaves sprout in their places similar in colour and shape. “The leaves teach us how to die,” Thoreau observed upon his death bed. “One wonders if the time will ever come when men will lie down as gracefully and as ripe”.
Old generations pass making way for new generations who carry forward in their veins, their ancestors. We must phase out a past that can no longer be amended and like children not knowing what happens next, earn a liberation from the future, with the faith that life has a continuity beyond us, seeing ourselves as part of a whole larger than ourselves and contributing to this eternal continuity.