(Image source: pixabay.com)My car was stuck in traffic on a long bridge over the river. I could do nothing except wait for the traffic to clear.
The panoramic sky over the river was blue with white clouds. I switched on the radio inside the car. Country music flowed like a gust on a hilltop.
People inside neighbouring cars turned their heads and began to listen to the music. Many of us involuntarily tapped our feet on the car’s floor.
I saw a stray dog walking on the sidewalk of the bridge. He sniffed around my car’s door and wagged his tail. Then he walked away with a dignified air.
The water was silver grey. The sun, mellowed under the shroud of a white cloud, was looking into the mirror of water and smiling. He seemed satisfied with his own image. What a narcissist! I thought.
This music, and this Sun, and this sky, and these clouds, and the dog will be gone the next moment. I shall remember them when I cross the bridge again, or I would be too preoccupied to think about them.
Yet, this moment defines me. It is a part of me now. It will add a slight difference to who I am. I am the person who sat in a car, listening to country music, stuck in traffic, along with a small stream of humanity, on a bridge above a river, under the blue sky with white clouds, as a dog passed by and wagged his tail at me. And the sun kept me thinking that he or she is a narcissist. That is the person that I am.
Strange, isn’t it? How all these tiny fractions of time and experience shape us!
The singer of that song, that tune, the climate, and my thoughts are inside a memory capsule now. No other human of the millions of us can have exactly the same experience ever. Yet, when I write this, you can relate.
By you, I mean all of you. Irrespective of faith or politics, colour or culture, all of you will relate to the moment I described in one way or another, with slight variations. Yet, we are Israel and Palestine, Ukraine and Russia.
Angry and full of unnecessary hatred.
Getting back to that bridge, where we were inside a moment of truth, and walking our minds back to similar experiences is one way to keep hope alive.
Shared experiences and their commonness. That's what makes us immortal, don't they?
The shared experience of inevitable death, moments of beauty experienced in sublimity.
The way a child laughs and the pleasant feeling of sun-dried clothes on one's skin. A lush green tree, a bird in the sky. Fleeting and yet permanent.
It can be liberating to know that you are the same as those who lived before and those who will come in the future, or it can make you feel less special and insignificant.
How do we come to terms with the impermanence of our existence?
Buddhism says that everything arises, and everything falls away. Understanding this can help us overcome all suffering and be at peace with our imperfect existence full of woes.
Accepting impermanence will help us see things as they are. It is about replacing wishful thinking with the reality of the world. Life's reality is that impermanence is the only permanent thing.
We can either live in refusal or accept that and be at peace.
The incessant flow of movement and change carries us on its crest. Happiness is knowing this. All other forms of happiness we perceive are fleeting and overrated.
Impermanence will teach us to see ourselves in others and in the living and non-living things of the world. We will see that everything works in perfect harmony- life and death, rising and falling, coming together and withering away. We are made whole only by the sky, the river, the bridge, the people, the music, and the dog.
Each moment is unique because it withers away. This is why many masters and gurus asked us to live in the moment. Once you begin to do that, you will feel full and content.
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