…I mused an eon of my life one evening, on the purpose of existence and on what leaves me with the most certainty, those being both birth and death; as well as that which gives me the least certainty – the life that spans between them. For, in my quest to understand the world, I am continually preempted by my own thought of what, in the meantime, I am to do in it.
We unfurl parchments of love, and mark red inked routes conjured through charts and maps by wayfaring spirits in their navigation of uncertainty; with it’s pendulous swells and troughs, and writhing storms toward the curved horizon of placidity. Upon our ecstasy or agony, whichever compels us to reach to the heavens for answers, from the black firmament, rains down the white light of stars. Besotted with beauty, we invent our own answers – swinging angrily at the words, despairing, disillusioned or disinterested. It is not what we hear, but that we listen – “purpose” is the captain of our ship. The journey is long, and the captain seeks only the safe passage of moments in the timeless sea of uncertainty.
The meaning of our lives is unveiled through the examination of purpose in others’…the mirror of meaning. Each soul ticks away a different moment within the same illusion of Time; yet each and every moment harmonizes to time’s passage. I became deluded by my own idea that happiness is an infrequent preoccupation of life, a proverbial “comma” to a long-winded torporous sentence; a quick paradise of dust kicked up by God stepping gingerly through a parched desert. I thought how a moment of happiness seems to pass so quickly and yet, how our disappointments seem to echo on and on through deep valleys of consciousness.
“…Half-heartedness doesn’t reach into majesty.
You set out to find God, but then you keep
stopping for long periods at mean-spirited roadhouses.
In a boat down a fast-running creek,
it feels like trees on the bank are rushing by.
What seems to be changing around us
is rather the speed of our craft
leaving this world…”
~ Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī
As life progresses there is this proclivity to toil and stir with the recollection of our sadness, leaving us amidst a talus of strife. I asked myself, could it be that the altar of happiness is built on the ruins of sorrow? That the happiness we deserve is measured by the high mark of our grief – layers for which we labor the years to build. Dwell not in grief over friends and strangers, lovers and strays. Adam named us all in the dawn of the pre-eternal and we have all known each other for very, very long time, and yet nary a moment of meaningful mingling. These port-o-calls of ponder are neither too long nor too short – whether church bell at midnight, camel bells in the predawn, or the wind whistling through the halyards of a listing ship. Do not dwell long in tavern of constant questions, you’ll not find the alter of happiness there… the answer to the straight path is in the calligraphy of the winding road.
Our lucubrating in any language, by keyboard or blunting pencil, earns no more than the meaning of its pause. You may translate a poem, but not it’s hidden poetry. Mingle with the secret culture of those who form silence with their lips and tongues and whose punctuation is set deftly by deep and bespeckled eyes. The sextant of the soul navigates these stars and it takes but a gentle turn of the helm, to spin the heavens.
From the bow of my vessel, I see an albatross, ’tis me; and that awareness is rooted in the depth of ages below my hull, not the duration of an encounter. My soul has sailed with many ships, amassed a bounty of gems, pearls, and trouble. Oh seekers of meaning, in the final analysis, you’d sooner risk capsizing and drowning alone in a deep ocean of unspeakable love than slip safely across the shallow pond of dalliance. Love is such an conundrum.
Life drifts into the hallow sound of passing reflections in my eyes. It sails not away, but deeper into the distance of my boundless oceanic heart, where no beacon of mine, nor fair word will ever find; beyond ruins and alters, where there is neither certainty, nor doubt.
