When I'm 62, I still get scared when I see the clouds rolling in, and when the sun comes out after the rain, I feel like I'm home. Sooner or later, we're all going to have to deal with this conversation about dying, as so many have before us, as my father is now, and as I was in my 30s with cancer. Although I had that experience in my own time, the conversation now took a different form. I held the old hands of my father, who was almost identical to mine, and gazed into his sleeping face, which resembled mine. His search for words before he spoke was like my silent heartbeat before every poem. As a result of the stroke, his words were pressed under his tongue like paving stones. My father didn't know it, but he had to go through it all. All I know is that when love ends, the veil that divides us will tear. I held his hand and waited for him to wake up. I feel that there is a "shared life" that washes over all of us. Everything leads us to the truth that we all live a "life together," and each of us does our best to continue it and pass it on through love, personally passing it on to the next person through ourselves. But while we are in the midst of life, we are only brought together by our experiences until this "shared life" meets us face to face, hand to hand, and kisses us on the lips. This sense of oneness brings us spectacular peace and truth, makes us feel that we are bigger than our problems, that we are bigger than our dreams, and that we are humbled by being part of something vast and beyond our control. After each life-transforming experience, we are forced to redraw our grasp of the world. So, entering the second half of life, are there any surprises in store for us?
What mask will sorrow and wonder hide behind to bring us into the mysterious future? Will all that I have lost ever be paid back to me in any other way? After all that has been washed away, what can I base myself on? What fate will I find myself in if I am born rich? After the tug of war between life and death, joy and sorrow, peace and fear, what was my unspoken experience telling me? All I know is that the more I rise above my present situation, the more I realize the value of life. But strangely, the closer I got to death, the closer I found myself to life. Not since my major surgery 26 years ago have I felt so closely intertwined with life and death. But still, I feel like I'm just getting started. I want to see more and feel more. I believe there is no end to what we can see and feel. Every time I feel my soul is weak and breathless, every time I feel that I cannot give love or receive it, there comes a thrilling wave of love or suffering that opens a new path for me and leads me forward. After experiencing so many landslides, I still stand in front of you. I believe that every time the eroded part of us falls, a new part of us is born, but only the critical core never changes, and that is the process of inner maturity. This is the dismantling of the fabric of our human brain. When we are faced with the constant suggestion of a torrent, it is only ourselves that makes us go downstream or against it. In fact, the torrent is also running in all directions, it doesn't matter which direction. The French philosopher Henri Bergson pointed out that time is such a river that exists everywhere at the same time, both present and eternal. It is what we call the present, the past and the coming.
These are the categories that humans define themselves, and let us live by them. But, for all that, we are in the midst of life, and the longer we are blessed to live, the easier it is to see the invalidity of these categories. Until one day, when more and more of that eternal moment is opened up, if only we could tear down the walls of our minds, the rivers of time would help us to soothe the ghosts of the past and the demons of the future. But these are some of the speculations that spring up in my mind as my sense of the world becomes more nuanced. I'm just starting to get into it now. What I used to know about meeting people was as warm as a flash of calcium carbide fire, but now as clear as a lake. It seemed that to grow old was to enter a world of light, not fire, where the core was not far from us. That core is waiting for me to stop thinking one day, and then it will tell me, with the feathery lightness of a quiet old friend, that a bird just landed here. Let me say this: the destiny of mankind as a whole is, in fact, the emergence of our own spirituality like the arc of a comet. As we travel through the long river of time, the outer shell of our life will eventually fade away, and our inner core will become brighter and brighter as the years glide by. If we live our days well, we will pass over the remaining essence until all that is left of life is light. Every time my soul feels weak and breathless, every time I feel like I have nothing left to give or to find, there is a new path opened for me by a breathtaking love or suffering that leads me deeper. Introspective moment ● Describe something you've owned for a long time, describe its history, and tell what moves you. Describe an object you want to give to someone and why you want to give it to someone.
