A grain of salt

I was overcome with a feeling of irreversibility last month, that my days as a child were now history. No longer could I look around searchingly when someone asked if there was an adult in the room. I was the adult in the room.

Have you heard the rumours about being an adult? They are true. You've got to be more responsible, more rational when you make decisions, more civilized. With it come words like investing and career and marriage. Words I’d rather not know about, not just yet. But the rumours don’t prepare you for what the real thing feels like. The sense of loss, the discomfort of trying to comprehend what this world is made of, what you are made of, the immense awareness of a clock that’s ticking fast in one direction and the hopeless attempt at keeping up.

The gut clenching feeling of irreversibility, the misery of repetition, the dread of a “routine”, the slow ebbing tide of today-s barraging into a lifetime.

Like sand through a hand, I feel my freedom, my carelessness, my courage to fall in love without fearing being hurt, my innocence slipping away from me. The me I knew for so long is losing it’s critical pieces.

It’s the first time I’ve contemplated suffering, experienced a pain deeper than the kind I’ve known, confronted my innermost fears and attempted to look at the universe in the eye.

Looking may be an overstatement, I only got around to squinting at it for a couple of seconds before the imminent fear of being blinded by it’s brilliance took over me.

A couple of seconds.

I encountered the universe for two brilliant moments and that was enough. For two seconds, there was no me, just the universe- undivided, whole, perfect, it required no explanation. It’s existence was the answer. For two seconds, I was a grain of salt in an ocean and that has told me more about the ocean than I ever could know by standing on the shore.

Fear took over me in the third second and I resent myself for that.

I let go the first second, and by the third, the mundane in me caught up. It’s the same part of me that shows up more and more as I grow up.

Maybe that’s why I’ve been yearning to go to the sea again. To be that grain of salt again.

Some days I come close to the taste of salt. I keep these days closer. Some days my tongue refuses to taste anything. I keep these days close too.

I’ve asked questions for a very long time and the answers have brought me more confusion. I made a feeble attempt to study the philosophies and the various -isms and it is perhaps premature of me to say, but I am fairly confident that these are mere structures of the mind. We make systems solely because we like order and we also like to think that we ‘know’, that we have answers. A completely understandable motive but let’s face it: who are we really fooling?

What is the big deal about being knowledgeable anyway? Give me a choice and I’ll pick being a child over a learned person. The child knows life the same way the heart knows how to pump blood. Life is elusive and I am sure that tomorrow, I will have some new thing to say about it, as will you.

Today, it resides in the tenderness around me.

A loving touch, a hand that puts food on your plate, a face that smiles when it sees yours.

Today, it resides in my longing.

Longing to be loved, to be able to love, to be truly free, to be alive.

Today, it resides in the little things.

A flower will bloom, a bird will sing, a raindrop will fall upon a leaf,.

Today, it resides in the impermanence of things.

The flower will wither away, the bird might become prey, the raindrop will be a cloud once again.

What are you thinking?

Yes, you’re right I talk way too much for someone who claims to have seen life for merely two seconds. I agree, I agree with you.

In agreement, I have a little more to say.

As life visits me today, I welcome it open heartedly. I wish for it to bring me tender things, things that I long for, for it to be gentle with me. But I will not protest if it brings me bitter things, reveals the ugly or is rough around the edges with me.

I welcome you, life. The shore is a safe place but today I am ready for the waves to crash over me. I have cried enough tears to know that salt is sacred and I have stayed on the shore for long to know that there is nothing standing between me and the ocean. A grain of salt is all there is to be.

Every waking day, with all my heart, I have asked to be free

Today, there is no one to ask.