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I celebrated my birthday earlier this month, and my husband and I went oceanside for the occasion. Iβve lived within an hour of an ocean or a sea most of my life, and periodically visiting the water feels like a necessary pilgrimage.
My husband went into the water for a swim, and I lay back on the warm sand and contemplated the blue sky. I used to think I would love to live on a beach somewhere, but Iβve changed my mind. After an hour or two, the constant movement of the water makes me feel similarly restless. Instead, nowadays, I dream of living in a lush forest, maybe somewhere with a lake. Immediately, on the heels of that thought, I wonder if that is what life is about, a gradual moving fromΒ what youβre sure you wantΒ and towardsΒ what you donβt yet know.Β
Iβm sure you have experienced this on birthdays or even just regular days when the need to make meaning (of life, from life) feels urgent and accessible. Even as I laughed at myself for wanting a one-sentence formula, a part of me still yearned to understand some elusive essence. A puffy white cloud drifted slowly to the right, and I followed its progress. It was hard to believe that while I spent a year on ordinary living, the earth had orbited the sun and come back to more or less the same spot. After all, most days, we donβt remember we are moving, part of a more complex circling than the life we can see. There was a tiny white dot of a cloud somewhere right above me, and I squinted at it. It wasn't a cloud, but the moon making its own circular journeys.Β
I thought of all these circles, overlapping and not, and I imagined each of us, like different planets, walking on paths around a blue-green lake in a vast forest. And for a moment, imagine that, like the earth, you have completed a year's worth of walking and returned to where you started. There is a bench, and you sit down.Β
βWhat is it,β you ask aloud, βthe meaning of life?βΒ
Almost immediately, a fish glides close to the surface of the water, nudging the water plants. Of course, you ignore it. Itβs just fish.Β
Thereβs some rumbling from above, and you look up warily at the sky, not wanting to be caught in a sudden thunderstorm. But there are no clouds, and you go back to staring at the water.
Is life an onion, you wonder moodily,Β one you keep peeling to get to the central mystery?
There is movement to your right, and you turn. A group of little birds are playing a complicated game of tag. Birds! You turn back to the water.Β
βIs life an onion?βΒ This time, you almost shout the question as though the universe (life) is hard of hearing.
When there is no immediately apparent response, you sigh unhappily. Life is like the water, you conclude, inscrutable. Maybe even uncaring. And you get up to go.
You may not know this, but a majestic dragon waits for you at the bench.
Every time (moment, day, year) you pause, the dragon steps forward because she wants to talk to you and share her thoughts.Β
βWhat is it,β you ask aloud, βthe meaning of life?βΒ
The dragon sits down next to you, and she gently clears her throat. She opens her mouth to speak but stops when she sees you glancing at the sky in alarm. When you mumble something, she waits politely. She even blushes a little because she has been waiting to talk to you for so long.
βIs life an onion?β you shout.
The dragon has to ponder that, but before she can completely mull over the onion -nature of life, youβre already sighing and walking away.
I wrote this post as a reminder (to myself, and to others with whom it may resonate) that when we stop trying to wring the moment for the elusive meaning of life, and our instinctual nature notices the movement of the fish, the birds playing, and the shapes of the clouds, we have already found answers we are seeking.
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π Making space for dragons
This was great Priya.
The way you went back and forth between the fish, the birds, and the clouds and your inner dialogue was such wonderful writing. And the way you used that technique to highlight how we donβt need to wring meaning out of every moment, and that we can instead just βbeβ with everything around us - was absolutely amazing.
I am prone to searching really hard in everything I see for some sort of βdeep universal answerβ - and whenever I catch myself doing so, and stop myself and just try to enjoy the walk Iβm on or the spot Iβm sitting - I feel I get more clarity than I do from all the searching.
Thanks Priya, great piece.
Beautiful! You capture the restlessness of our rational mind so well, its insistence on driving the conversation and supplying metaphors and analogies to βmake meaning.β None of that impulse is wrong but it can cloud the mystery of direct experience. The fish and the bird sought to connect, even in their strangeness. In rare quiet moments like that, Iβve heard the message to let metaphor lie and be present with, in David Abramβs words, βthe magic of the real.β
Iβm so curious about that dragon.