Impermanence and pain.

Despite the ever-familiar, the string of time that links past, present, future, the habit-forming ruts of our daily lives, the future holds infinite potential.

I sliced open my hand two weeks ago. It was not the work of a polar bear, as some have been led to believe, but rather a glass bottle and my own brash action. As I realized the extent of the wound, those people nearby leapt into action. Before I had even shaken free of the shock that gripped me I was halfway to a car, my hand wrapped in a makeshift bandage of rags and rubber bands. I nearly fainted, nearly hit the ground, but that I was supported from behind by a friend. Directly afterwards, I regained my senses and the shock subsided, but for those crucial moments I was entirely dependent on those around me to care for me. I could have done it myself, do not get me wrong. I was in no real serious danger as long as I staunched the flow of blood, and I would have known what to do. But that I didn't have to meant so much to me. That I had been supported, literally and figuratively, for the half a minute I was unable to take care of myself, and that all I had to do was trust meant so much that it brought me to tears during the fifteen minute drive to the ER. The tears had nothing to do with the wound, and everything to do with a realization of my own gratitude.

The physical pain was nothing when compared to the emotional enormity that we are fragile, mortal beings. We are sacks of juice that drips from our bodies with the slightest puncture. And yet with all that, we are amazing resilient. There is strength to us, in our ability to heal, to repair, to move forward. To ultimately accept that what is, is, and it is time to get on with our lives.

My fathers heart attack last November, his near death after 65 years of health, has brought be closer to the reality that the future comes, and nothing lasts forever. I could have easily suffered tendon and nerve damage.

I remember there was a monk from Liverpool who was giving us a crash course in Buddhism my first week in India. Something he said really stuck with me: "When something begins, that things end is created in the same moment." Cultured un-attachment is the Buddhist's way of dealing with this fundamental impermanence. I do not know that works for me--we'll see.

That all being said, we will all die. Likely sooner than we wish. There is no reason not to do what we love, for as long as we exist on this world.

Where does our greatest passion meet the deepest need in the world? There we will find our calling. Or so it seems to me.