good day--yellowclaw

8.31.17

No permanence is ours; we are a wave That flows to fit whatever form it finds

Hermann Hesse

The Real You - Alan Watts

This video has changed my life. 

The mix of nostalgia and acceptance swept over me as I sipped tea in New Hyde Park. The sun had set, and like hundreds of times before, I met the traffic and lights of the town, this time alone. There's something about being in familiar places without seeing familiar faces that reminds me of being lost in the wilderness- no matter how many critters you see or trees tower over you, it's still not what you're looking for. 

So I sat, reading as my tea cooled down, trying to ignore the symphony of a past life from flooding my mind. And then I came to this quote:

He who bings to himself a Joy,

Does the winged life destroy;

He who kisses the Joy as it flies,

Lives in Eternity's sunrise.  -William Blake

And so I left a place where a memory faded only to come to a place where one was in the process of fading. Another close friend, moving away, on to better things. All things go. As she and I looked through pictures of the past and laughed at the fun we had, I couldn't help but taste the inevitability of it all. For good or bad, everything leaves. What seems good might not be, and what is painful might be for the best, but it all goes away. But happiness, I've come to know, is not in the objects as they pass, but in the open, warm, gentle mind which greets them as they fly by.