Today I went to the local health food store to pick up a few items. Besides two employees, I happened to be the only other person there. While scanning my items, out of nowhere the guy working the cash register yells out, “Hey Anton!”
“Yo!” I heard a phantom voice responding from the back, echoing through the small building.
“What’s the meaning of life?” the cashier surprised me with the unexpected words as he completed his inner thoughts made public, “I’m having an existential crisis up here!”
I giggled under my breath, amused at the subject matter of this “small talk” being not so small at all. As the young man, who I assumed to be Anton, rounded the corner, the smirk on his face made it clear that he was enjoying his own sarcastic response. “The meaning of life is death, bro. Didn’t you know? We’re born just so we can die.” I walked out of the store as the two men continued their private co-worker banter.
Later, I decided to go for a walk to one of my favorite nature spots. It wasn’t until I was settled and seated upon the makeshift floor pillow fashioned out of several flat-topped stones perfectly pieced together – Machu Picchu style – that the truth of Anton’s words hit me.
As I sat listening to the gurgling sounds of water escaping through the single hole in the frozen creek’s thick sheet of ice, I looked over my shoulder and noticed the smallest glimmer of life in what at first glance looked to be a dead barren skeleton of a nearby bush. Happily surprised I moved my face as near as possible for an up close examination of the tiny amber lights that dotted the tips of its branches. “Wow it’s deep winter right now and yet…!
Even that skinny unassuming little bush that looked like it was dead had this beautiful glowing life bubbling forth from it! I stared in awe. I felt honored to behold it. It felt like I was privy to a new life that was barely forming…like I was witness to the delicate embryo phase of this plant’s soon-to-be existence. But I can’t even count how many times I had sat in that same spot and never noticed the small private beauty before.
Life. Death. The whole mysterious phenomenon began to swirl in my thoughts. That’s when Anton’s words popped into my mind. We’re born just so we can die. How true! But not merely in the big events of bodily or physical experiences of being born and of dying but rather, like the barely noticeable life I spotted, the wisdom of Anton’s words is found in the tiniest most unassuming details. It’s in the small deaths, the everyday deaths, the deaths that come from releasing, letting go, moving on and starting over again and again. It’s crying and then feeling relived afterward. It’s screaming so loud and hard that it hurts your throat and then surrendering the tension in your body because you finally let it out! Life is a constant series of minuscule deaths and rebirths, if you’re fortunate.
I am thankful to have discovered this wisdom in such a quiet and beautiful way today.
ReV
Reverent Expressions 