What a week this has been! No trauma. All the big events have been on television and occurring to other people. Frankly I am sick of the whole Michael Jackson coverage and have stopped viewing news because there is no news beyond that. In the grand scheme of things his life is really very unimportant. And exceeded in unimportance only by his death.
Please don't send hate mail. And frankly I felt the same way about Elvis Presley. And now some football star (excuse me former football star) and his girl friend have been killed. There are seldom any former sports stars that do much with their lives after they leave the field. Some feel forced to re-enter the Tour de France way past their prime.
All that above coupled with the closing of Y!360 brings to mind a stanza from a poem or a song I heard long ago - for everything there is a season. All things in nature sprout or are birthed or formed and then they age and degenerate and go back to where they came in altered form.
I have been watching my poppies a lot this summer. They were a riot of buds which seem to take forever to burst open. The flowers, by flower standards, are huge. And they no sooner seem to get out the wrinkles (unlike some flowers they are scrunched up in their buds) then they fade. yesterday I took a picture of five of them - one was just bursting forth and one dropping color and petals. Three in all their glory.
That says so much about the process of life. If there is a fault in our culture greater than any other it is our inability to let go. We do not celebrate life's passages but hold entirely too tightly to the now. We spend billions and put our loved ones through great pain in our futile attempts to cheat death. We want to hold on to our youth forever and spend time and money to reduce wrinkles and delete gray, pop a pill for instant erections like teenage boys. And we elevate hollow heroes to legendary status and artificially try to keep them there. If we cannot do that in life we do it in death. We build pyramids of edited film strips.
We really need to learn to let go. In nature death is as important as birth. Enjoy this moment for it is life. And be prepared to decamp and move on.
3 comments:
l agree with you.
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quite a few yrs ago, l read in a book of tibetan buddhism, that living and dying is our karma.
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when l mention this to most they think lm talking about the other karma, until someone helps them understand the word.
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good write jacqui...
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.
Sounds easy enough...
For some reason I had my settings wrong on this blog and I was not getting e-mail notifications of comments posted here.
So I apologize for seeming to ignore you. Sorry. I think I have that handled for the future.
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