The planet often acts as a mirror for the mind. As I fly
high above the earth, cramped in an airplane seat that barely accommodates the
average American girth, a glorious fire orange sunset graces my view outside
the window, replacing what would have been television news had I stayed put in
Los Angeles.
The plane is cruising over the Northwest, a landmass prone
to rain and more rain. So instead of gazing upon puffy white clouds that look
like an angel’s bedroom set, they are black and thick, ominously forming a
blanket of gloom more like Satan’s den than any heavenly abode.
Still, the intensity of the sun’s hot hues as it slinks
behind the earth’s curvature compensates for what surely looks like trouble for
earth’s people underneath that dismal black cloudbank. And then it gets us too.
The seat belt sign pings on, a harsh intercom voice directs us to buckle up,
and the riot of color disappears into massive blackness, as a high and mighty
rain cloud engulfs the plane. Just like that, reality shifts instantaneously
from visual feast to blind darkness.
Likewise, we go along in our daily lives as if we have
forever, blithely content to ignore the inevitable fate that awaits all those
who are born. Many of us are lucky to live out the life cycle with reasonable
grace and only a modicum of disaster. But others have a different lesson, that
comes as swiftly as that vision of a spectacular sunset turned black as coal:
the person who dies of sudden cardiac arrest; victims of a mad gunman in a
shopping mall, a soldier who takes a bullet to the heart; a life snuffed out by
a drunk driver, a massive stroke, a bomb dropped on a wedding party, a bomb
dropped on a funeral, and so many more unfathomable circumstances that actually
happen to real people.
Instead of living in fear of what might come to pass -
because in fact it is a miracle that our bodies and our societies function as
well as they do – it is far better to live in gratitude for the ingoing and
outgoing breath while it is with us. Once a great teacher said, “May you die
with no regrets.”
And I might add, while you are alive, may you live with no
regrets. Seize the moment and make it count, because the moment is all that we
can know for certain. And may I listen to my own advice…
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