#august27

Felipe and Letizia retrospective: August 27th

2019: Visit to King Juan Carlos at the hospital (1, 2)

Thinking lots — thinking always — about the nature of human experience. Sometimes when I am feeling anxious or stressed or lost, I try to picture the globe, falling through space and time with billions and billions of other people falling with it. 

I think of the feeling you get packed in a concert hall — a feeling of sonder — when you realize that the thousands of souls filling the hall all lead lives as complicated internally as they are externally. I think about how every other soul alive — every should that has lived before and every should that is yet to come — includes me in their own sense of sonder. To them, I am one of thousands. The other soul.

For I am the only one, the sole composition of the smallest minority, that is experiencing life through my eyes. 

This feeling humbles me and my problems and worries. I live a little life. With little people. In a little world. Before we know it, we all will be returning to the earth — decamping into the ground or incinerated into the air — and carry on to become the clouds over the Bay, the waves of the Pacific, or the tree that bears fruit.

To know this reminds me not to worry so much. To let go of my little worries. My duty must then be to enjoy life and all its offerings. I must treat my being and all the particles that make it with love, grace, and pleasure before they continue on, back into the universe, to transform into other beings.

Yesterday, I was driving to work, experiencing the joy of singing to a song in the car (”Past Lives” by BØRNS) when a truck slowed down beside me. The driver, a handsome young man, made eye contact with me and blew me a kiss. We laughed and drove on. At the next stop we’re beside each other once again. With his hand out the window, he waved to me. I was nervous, but rolled down my window. He told me to pull my car up closer and to come hang out.

There we were, two strangers exchanging names and wit and compliments. Though I think his original intention was to flirt, he asked my age and pivoted to act simply out of kindness and humanity. He told me that I was at a great age and that I beautiful things ahead of me. He said he could tell I would have a good life, and I believed him. 

The interaction made my day, and I was struck by the simplicity and brevity of it. People are kind and good. We care connection and yet we live such segregated lives. How often do we surround ourselves with people — in traffic or otherwise — without acknowledging our greater atomic connection? 

Miles, the handsome boy in the truck, has made me want to drive with the windows down. He made we realizes that window is still a wall, and that letting others see us is not the same as letting people in.

Today I am grateful for:

1. Friends hidden behind a stranger’s face.

2. The universal heart.

3. Things and songs and beings that make me feel connected to a higher source.