Hindu Musings: The End of Spring

Dr. Jordan Peterson gave the suggestion of spending 15 minutes per day writing...as a form of practice. Well, here it goes. My first day.

Good Day to All 
Spring was never waiting for us. Can one let evening come? How much rage can be compacted into a nanosecond? 
Why does the flame symbolize love? I once had a professor that had too many questions, but my answers only led to more questions. I wish I had the courage at the time to tell her I was only writing questions into my work, so she could see the answers more clearly. She wouldn't have listened anyway. 

Some spend their lifetime trying to find the meaning of life. Maybe in that process the flame begins to run out or the spark never ignited to begin with anyway. It has always been somewhat mesmerizing to think that you can control your own destiny, but you cannot make the flame last forever. When you have shared your warmth with another person, perhaps they might find comfort in it for a year or two, but all of sudden your warmth is not a blanket large enough for them, and their minds begin to wander.

Maybe we cannot control our own destiny, but maybe the rage can dissolve and sublimate. Looking back on the past, there are many lessons of life, but I once asked someone, would you trade your old mistakes for anything? This is from a song lyric, and it refers to finding the value in the life lessons that come from making mistakes. The person I asked that question to said no, absolutely not. I, on the other hand, am a little different. I would trade my mistakes for the past. Perhaps there is a certain sense of wisdom that comes from life lessons, but I am still the same person. It is not the value of the life lesson that has so much personal importance for me, it is choosing the pathway that has the least destruction. No matter what the consequence on my personal character, I would choose for destruction to be the smallest. That is what I would say if I could change the past, but I cannot, so I digress.

As we evolve into the world of technology and global communications, we can share messages and our daily life with someone from any corner of the globe within seconds, but one of the largest challenges that the world of virtual relations has never surpassed has been...what is the other person doing on the other side of their electronic device? When you meet someone in a virtual sphere, you do not know what other sparks and flames they have already ignited in their life....Are you just one of many candles around the cake? Or perhaps you are another log on their fire....or maybe you are the only light in their tunnel. The unknown can be a sense of wonder, but it can also lead to personal destruction. Nonetheless, we should never fear it.

Like any fire, no matter how much you tend to it, it can go out. A person who once shared nothing but kindness and adoration with you, has nothing left to give or say, and only keeps you around because there is no conflict to justify ending the connection. Until one day when the knot will either untie itself or the string will be cut without warrant. In the younger years, this used to be a sign of pain. The flame going out, and the cold sweeping in. The string cut, and your life falling.

As one gets older. It is neither of the two things, for people are not drops of fire, nor are they knots tied into string. They are human lives. Some selfish. Some self-absorbed. Yet as we grow older, we always learn that there all traits positive and negative are also found in ourselves. We are not evil, but we can commit evil. We are not dark, but the darkness is real if you can envision it. We do not want to hurt and bring destruction forward, but there are times when we all bring the destruction all the same. 



If peace is the removal of destruction from both the mind and the external world, let us choose the pathways that will rid of destruction and push us toward peace and mental clarity. The warmth that comes from reading the words of a lover is not warmth at all. It is a preoccupation. Bitterness confounds the past. Warmth is in the present for a moment, but the future is that of bliss if we choose to find a way. We must always ask ourselves, which pathway will bring the smallest amount of destruction and bring peace, even for just a moment.