the now

Day 236

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Just me

When you have kids, no one tells you, the love is cruel!

It overflows through every pore in your body. It sits in the driver’s seat of your life and takes you places you never knew existed. It kills you. You feel every little scrape on their knees, every tiny disappointment, exhilaration and aspiration. It is like having extensions of oneself, roaming around in other bodies, watching Smurfs and Power Rangers, doing their home work, ice skating, choosing to walk through puddles on the road to school, making new friends, singing in the school choir, acting in the nativity play, recognizing you from a distance in a crowd and running towards you with their arms wide open and a big beaming smile on their faces. That kind of love makes you forget everything else.

When he was at school, the thought of him going to university brought tears to my eyes. When he went to university, I read up about ‘detachment’ and thought I had learnt what I needed to learn. Now I know I learnt nothing.

Is life just about learning?

May be it is about whatever I want it to be about.

May be it is also about having lots of fun.

Day 232

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Listening to music rendered with love, produced with love, speaking of love, filled every particle of my being with immense love. I sat in the concert hall soaked from head to toe in this heady elixir with my sweetheart on one side and my closest friend on the other. I reached out to them and held their hands in mine. Sitting with my eyes closed, just being in that moment felt blissful. Life was whole and complete. Nothing less, nothing more.

All colours are an expression of love. Every musical note vibrates with love. Grief is love. Beauty is love. God is love. Life is love. I am love. You are love. There is nothing else. It’s love that keeps us alive. It makes life worth living. Love is all we need. There is an abundance of it all around us – in the flowers, the trees, the clouds, the rain, the grass, the earth, the sun, the stars and the moon. These have been created out of love.

Being able to hear, appreciate and feel music is a gift.
Time with loved ones is a blessing.

A world without love does not exist as every atom of the Universe is Love.

Day 226

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The rose bush in my garden seems really confused. It is laden with buds at all stages of blossoming, from the most tightly shut to the ‘nearly there’ stage. The pinkish-red petals are waiting to burst forth in their full glory from the deep green stems against the whitish-blue sky filled with a watery sun. It’s neighbour has self-destructed, may be due to my over-enthusiastic pruning last year or the wrath of a long harsh winter. May be no reason at all. It is much colder than it should be for this time of year.

It is perfect. Yet it’s all dying. I am witnessing the cycle of life unfold before my eyes. Birth, to full development, to decay.

The rose bush speaks to me of an order beyond my comprehension, a mystery for which I feel a deep and abiding trust even as my mind protests.

Why do things turn out the way they do? The seemingly immovable Himalayas buckled and much of Nepal shattered. Trying to understand the intricacies of karma is well beyond human capacity. We might think that this is because of that, or that because of this, or that bad things are bad, and good things are good, when in actual fact life is more complex, and more interesting than that.

Within every challenge, every obstacle, lies the potential for both learning and kindness. It re-establishes my faith in the human spirit. This kind of trust recognises that life by its very nature is a dance of opposing and interrelated forces where things break apart and come together, over and over again.

Vulnerability is a beautiful thing.

Day 225

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“I am fine.” – a lie spoken by millions everyday, I am sure. Reasons? Lack of time, lack of sincerity in the person asking the question, lack of closeness, fear of loosing friends if we were honest, not knowing how to translate feelings to words, believing that no one actually cares, politeness …..

As for me, I go from being an upbeat and smart professional to a romantic partner to a busy householder to a mother subsumed in grief. I am learning just to be in the moment, one hundred percent. Whatever role I am in at any given moment, I just live it to the fullest – laugh whole heartedly, work well and hard, be fully present to everyone around me, feel terribly sad…..whatever. One moment at a time. Every moment lived to the full cannot amount to anything less than a life lived to the fullest with all its flavours, seasons and hues.

The deeper the experience of sorrow, the higher the joy. I appreciate my smiles and laughter much more than before. The tender moments shared with close ones and new memories created are more precious now than they have ever been. Tears still come effortlessly but my eyes are less heavily laden with them compared to a month ago.

Today while watching TV, my eyes drifted away from the screen and came to rest on his beautiful gentle smile in the picture on the mantle piece. I looked into his bright smiley eyes and my heart melted. I smiled with gratitude and tears in my eyes.

“There is a sacredness in tears.
They are not a mark of weakness but of power.
They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues.
They are messengers of overwhelming grief and unspeakable love.”
Rumi

Day 215

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It’s been 30 weeks and 6 days.

Has it been long or not so long?

I feel suspended in a pool of time with no beginning, middle or end. Lots of ripples, some huge waves, some small and a few violent storms. Never calm. A temperamental volcano lives beneath this pool, always threatening. An opaque haze hangs over this pool, making everything invisible, especially the horizon.

It was joy I think. That thing I felt. Where things shift into focus for a fraction of a second and everything makes sense. For that snippet of time I could see a lotus in the mud, a pearl in the sludge, an outpouring of grace. It came from a moment of acceptance. Yes. It has happened. I accept. No fight. No questions. Just my breath and I floating across the universe, in  complete harmony with everything within and without. Completely relaxed. Like a baby keeping full faith in the kindness and generosity of Mother Nature. Having no doubt that everything is taken care of.

This is how my son would want me to be – at peace with what is. He is on his journey and I am on mine. I wish him deep and immense joy and I know he wishes me the same. I owe it to him, and to myself, to aim for acceptance and use this new energy creatively.