I’ve come across two quotes and a poem that gave me pause and created a particular effect on my sense of reality. The effect, I am speaking of is, I think, a unique experience for someone who is getting older. When I say, “for someone who is getting older” I am referring to a person close to my age or older, my age being 73. But, I must confess, it is an experience, I believe that we all have, no matter what our age, when we have an “in-the-moment” experience of time racing by and we realize we cannot stop it. I will give the two quotes and then the poem and let you see if you have an experience that relates in some way to what I am now writing about.
Quote #1: We cross infinity with every step; we meet eternity in every second.” —Rabindranath Tagore.
Quote #2: “Ordinary men hate solitude. But the Master makes use of it, embracing his aloneness, realizing he is one with the whole universe.” ― Lao Tzu
Poem: And the days are not full enough
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse
Not shaking the grass. — Ezra Pound
The experience I have is both sudden and fleeting. It strikes me just below the heart and runs quickly, like lightning, across my chest. I feel a gash, but there is no blood and no wound. I am struck with sadness and a desire for time to stop and roll back and give me back my youthful body and time to relive or live again or live with everything I know now. I want the people back, the people whom I have loved, the first kiss that meant so much, the sensual feeling of being close and held and loved. I want the people back who are now dead, like my mother whom I still can’t believe has died and whose ashes are spread over the earth so I can’t even visit her grave. I want a happy dinner at home, or an evening out on the town, or a ride through the country. I want laughter and being together. I want all these things and much more in the flash of a moment and a gash across my chest. And then for just a second, I revel in the sadness this evokes and the deep dark tears of a heart that seems bigger than mine and then I feel an opening of love. I feel love for what was and what is, and for what is yet to come. And then I feel no time, but instead a sudden in-the-moment awareness that seems to embrace the whole world, knowing there is no time, or space, and no age. Then comes this remarkable alive and sensual realization that I am every age at once, all ages, all people, all holy. There is no death.