On ephemerality
The briefest moment can change everything. A thought, a comment, a touch, a lump, a search of your (now ex) partner’s Amazon wishlist he shared for you, but you suppose he forgot he did. It is a cliché in literature and media; however, in real life, the range of emotion from groundbreaking to earth-shattering is unavoidable.
These brief moments ground you back into reality and can make you feel infinite or finite. Meeting the love of your life because you randomly decided to stay in the cheapest inn available unfolds an entire world before you that you never considered before. Finding a weird-ass mole on your shoulder immediately makes you think, “Who is getting my cats?” for your will.
You realize in this moment just how fleeting all of this is. And yet these are moments that define our lives. They decide how we spend our days. Some days, the decisions are so earth-unshattering that you don’t even realize they’re changing the trajectory of your life. And then there are moments you can look back and say, "That's when everything changed"—you can name the experience, the feeling, the find, and the thought when everything changed.
In my most recent encounter with the ephemeral, I surprised myself by my reaction. You don’t know how you’re going to respond to anything until you’re in it. You just can’t have the slightest clue. With infidelity, death, loss, promotions, etc. Nothing can really prepare you. I always assumed my reaction would be to rally and face it, but I actually just felt defeated. I sank into a depression, and I’m still not sure I’ve made it out. I thought I would respond with strength and resilience, going into the “fight” survival instinct mode. Instead, I felt tired and immediately worn. I wasn’t even sad, just exhausted. I would be lying if I didn’t admit that I am disappointed with myself. I am still uncovering why this was my reaction.
Another thing that surprised me was realizing how much my beliefs had shifted— which is a good thing. The older I get, the more unflappable I become. My beliefs are no longer cerebral; they are becoming embodied, living in my bones and soul (which I am beginning to believe in more and more as I age). I have settled into a belief system that views humans as part of a whole rather than having dominion. Time is no longer linear to me. The energy I put out during my time here now will cause a ripple in the time of everything. The energy I offer others becomes the energy that weaves the thread of human interactions.
Interconnectedness has become paramount to my belief system.
Though we are ephemeral beings, we never really truly die. Our energy is never lost; we simply fold back into the expanse.