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Be here, now, for this is all that matters

You only have now to live – to take in, to rejoice in, to control

You don’t have the future – you don’t know what will happen then

You’ve already lost the past – you can’t relive what’s been and gone

Despite all that you’ve dealt with before, and what lies ahead

You’re here for now – you’re alive, your heart still beats, and you still breathe

Regret not all that you’ve left behind

Rejoice about where it has brought you to

Revel in what you have now, who you are now

For unless you are content today, there will be nothing better tomorrow

Look up and thank the universe for bringing you to where you are now

And step on ahead towards where it can lead you tomorrow

All my life, I wanted to belong with someone

Wanted someone’s hand to hold

Have someone beside me, on the journey that is life

And with you, I find that I truly belong

For the first time, I no longer feel like an aimless wanderer

No more blank canvases, no more empty gazing with a heavy heart

No more dead ends and dark corners to hide my tears and fears

You’re here, for good, and as you hold my hand through it all

There is going to be no more looking back at what was, and what has been

I belong with you now, and always will belong by your side

Life, as I interpret it: you are born, and then you die.

Period.

Sometimes we forget there exists a higher plane. We become so near-sighted and consumed in our day-to-day lives, in materialism, that we forget to pause and listen intently to the profound silence behind all that noise. We get so involved in just living each day, getting it over with, and moving onto the next – we perceive our days as hurdles in the rat race we call life. But that’s not what life is all about – getting from one day to the next.

How many times have we really taken a step back from our self-imposed slavish routines, and pondered about where we fit into the universe’s scheme? Were we merely created to bring about chaos in the order and order in the chaos?

Our souls were brought into what we know as that conscious world to learn from the experience that this world can offer. The whole purpose of this life is but enlightenment. This enlightenment received here is what propels us higher on a spiritual plane. We know that there are so many vast layers or levels that make up the universe. We need to respect the higher energies in order to become more aware of the powers or capabilities within ourselves and all around us.

In present times, we have been so caught up in the menial tasks that we have forgotten to look up at the skies and look at the clouds in various shapes just floating by, or look at the night skies and the twinkling stars, in the hopes to see a shooting star falling down on earth. We have no time to gaze anymore – sure we can see but we’ve forgotten to look. Sure we’re breathing, but just because we need oxygen to go on on. But we’ve forgotten to inhale and absorb the bouquet of fragrances this world has to offer – of wet mud in the first rain, of freshly cut grass, of flowers in bloom. We hold each others’ hands every now and then without feeling the lives running through the veins.

When do we stop merely breathing and really start living all the moments we have here with us? When do we really start letting ourselves feel every emotion we ought to – all the joys, all the heartaches, all the melancholia, and all the rage? When do we stop hearing and really start listening – to all the noise and all the silence?

We use the others as a mirror; we use their judgment of us as a means of assessing whether we’re adequately acceptable or appropriate. We measure the quality of our lives and actions on the basis of what others feel are right. Over time, our inner voices have been muted, drowned in the cacophony that is the opinion of ‘the others’. Why do we feel our life if meaningless until someone else approves of how we are doing? Why must we relegate our conscience to such miserable depths of insignificance, and why must we hold in high regards the voices of the others? Since when did the rest of the world, and we ourselves, become this selfless – assuming to be selfish is to listen to our own inner voice? Apparently, today, it is alright to live our lives based on others’ declarations, proclamations of what is right and what is wrong.

At the same time, we have stopped putting ourselves in others’ places before conveying our feelings and thoughts to them. We do not take time to think of how our words or actions could affect ‘the others’ – the very same others, before we let it all out on them. We give them a piece of our mind when we think we ought to, not once stopping to think if what we say would be productive for either us or them. Whatever happened to “stop, think, and then act”? Yes, we are a frustrated lot; we have many things to worry about in this world. But so do ‘the others’ – everyone worries. What allows us to be so selfish then, so unfeeling towards ‘the others’?

Thoughts drift in and out of my mind

So many I cannot recollect, I cannot keep count

But they vanish even before I can pen them down

Receding from my conscious memory

Leaving behind a hint of recollection

A vague sense of having thought of something

Like the slight foam that a wave leaves behind on the sea shore

Thoughts drift into my mind like little clouds

Clouds that I cannot catch, clouds that do not rain down

But then again, it never can rain when the sun shines, can it?

So I smile and nod my head when you speak

I pretend to listen to you, and I pretend to care

A smirk upon my face that I don’t even try to conceal

My eyes fixed upon distant nothingness

As I continue to ‘pay attention’ to you

Right before you I stand, stifling yawns

Yet you go on ranting, and you go on raving

Trying your best to demolish my self-esteem

And you fail so miserably

But because you sit upon a pedestal above me

I shall appease you with my fake expressions

While in reality, to me, you are but an insignificant fleck of nothingness

Contentment feels like a state of oblivion. It doesn’t matter what goes on in the material world – you continue to remain upbeat, unaffected. You also tend to not ponder over issues – the mind is at peace, and it’s alright to be at peace. A sort of mental inertia sets is when you are content, which you wish to not disturb. You are blinded by a vision of serenity, and nothing stays in your mind long enough to upset you. It’s like a vision of a horizon between a calm sea and a perfectly cloudless sky.

You yearn for this feeling all lifelong, yet it takes time to realize when you’ve actually achieved this state. A state where nothing sticks on you, and all the negativity just melts away, and all you have in your mind is a vast, blank canvas. This is bliss – oblivion at its peak, peace like you cannot even comprehend.

Life is all about longing. We go through life, longing for warmth, for affection, for a sense of belonging. We long to be needed, to be understood. We long for meaning, for purpose, for a sense of fulfillment. As soon as we get one thing that we’d been longing for, we get a sense of longing for something else.

I know the scriptures tell us to release ourselves or break the cycle of longing, but really, shouldn’t it be telling us to rise above it all after having fulfilled everything our conscious needs and is completely satisfied? When the mind has experienced all there is to experience in the world, it then becomes but a natural progression towards something greater. If the reason for life was merely to surpass all that the world has to offer and seek release of the soul to the higher worlds, there wouldn’t have been so much effort spent by the Maker to offer so many ‘distractions’ unto humanity.

If life is for living, then shouldn’t we live through all that life has to give to us before we die, or fade away? If it was really all about ignoring the world, then do we not miss out on the lessons we ought to learn?