It’s a quiet winter morning, the sun is shining. Trains pass by smoothly. Some birds are singing, some crows are calling out. A few dead leaves, refusing to let go of the tree, rustle in the wind.
This day marks the beginning of a new year, full of hope and good intentions. Will your dreams come true, or will they turn into nightmares? Hopefully, a better world is to come. May what is already good thrive and deepen. Forever?
The quiet peace, however, the buzzing and pulsating – they don’t know of an end or a new start. It doesn’t improve, it pervades – it is, as this.
For one, the memory of last year became painted as loss, as hardship. Will the nightmare end? For others, the past year was one of growth and victory. Will it continue? You don’t dare to think how it could change.
The fragment called “year”, however, is a fiction.
What seems to happen in and as a year is life seamlessly and effortlessly flowing and shapeshifting: no turning point where growth becomes the decay that nurtures the seed; where appearance, unnoticed or sudden, changes and vanishes and arises.
Nothing can be predicted, although pattern recognition can seduce one into believing in a certain unfolding of events. This can seduce you into believing you have control, that you know and understand. To succeed and master your life, you have to own it. Division profoundly runs your mindscape and perception.
However, in the quietude of this morning, it all collapses. But it’s not like an Armageddon or a supernova. No story of a glorious transformation, of a victorious change, or illumination. No drama, no sorrow, no heaviness. No euphoria.
Just this. Unspectacular and simple.
Past and future – mere inhale and exhale.
