This too shall pass...

It’s funny how profoundly moments change lives. One unremarkable speck in space-time, an inconspicuous dot in the cosmic ocean, scarcely different from any other and perhaps irrelevant to the rest of the universe but the fact that your life has a galactic difference on either side of that one tiny singular instant in all of eternity amazes me.

And it amuses me to realize how unpredictable they are. Despite all our efforts, schemes and toils to rule them, it is a truth- almost too painful to accept- that they are utterly and absolutely out of our control. We remain a tiny dispensable cog in an unimaginably massive and incomprehensible design we blissfully choose to believe we understand. 

It makes some sense at times in retrospect, where it all seems to ‘add up’. Like joining the dots on their way back, as Jobs had suggested. But isn’t it just a ravaged mind gratifying itself with little deserved solace when it sees some light after a long, dark tunnel?

Is it just destiny then? 

Is it sheer chaos- unforgiving but fair?

Is it a matter of simple mathematics? The law of averages, maybe, which postulates that everything WILL happen- eventually…

Or is it a hitherto incomprehensible chain of causality- a complicated sum of histories that hates to be understood?

Or is it all just a bleak mental construct- like a lunatic in our head, for little actually changes in the physical world which continues to remain immune to the vagary of human condition. 

Isn’t then all of life just an illusion of control that we can mercilessly be deprived of any day, any moment? Isn’t hope the greatest delusion? What are all our labors worth? Are we doomed to live with philosophical questions than with philosophical answers?

It is the greatest irony of life that with a wide enough perspective and on a big enough timeline, almost anything you do will ultimately be insignificant and yet in the moment it seems most important that you do it. 

Caring too much is a disadvantage. It gets you fixated on things, people and perspectives. That leaves little room for correction and acceptance. All of life is an exercise not just to learn why and how to find what you love, but more importantly how to let it go. It is surprising how difficult it is to acknowledge this simple fact.

Perhaps there is nothing to be achieved and nowhere to go. And yet all we have are these moments, which take away bits of us until there aren’t enough left to live. 

We can only try to learn to accept and much more importantly let go of such moments.