"Only that day dawns to which you are awake"
- Henry David Thoreau [Walden]
Life passes us by in a blink of an eye. Such a familiar phrase, recounted by thousands; each of us has heard it or used it as a remark sometime, somewhere, somehow. But have we really understood what it means? Surely eighty years in not a blink, or is it? What does it mean to be awake, to be in the moment? How do we look back upon our life? Why do we find ourselves repeatedly asking the question – “why me?” Is it possible to never have to ask that question again? May be that is what being awake is all about.
Every moment in the Universe presents a possibility. And in the possibility of that moment lies the potential to bring to life the impossible – that which is not yet. Everything in this world is an impossibility. Not because it could not be or cannot be, but because an infinite number of factors have to be in place for any single event to occur; and hence the uncertainty, hence the insecurity and hence the confusion.
The past is a sum total of all presents. To be awake to the present is to be awake to this connection in life. Who you are is a consequence of whom you have been, what you have lived through and the forks that you have walked as well as those that you have shunned. But this net does not end there. Your being is also a consequence of a myriad other choices made by millions of other people, of a billion other events taking place in the Universe of a zillion other eventualities of which you may never come to know. Hence the unpredictability in life.
To be awake then is to be aware of these infinite eternal connections in life and to cherish and to hold on to and to be present in each and every such moment – not because life is short, but because life is unfolding, life is happening and most important of all – it is not a random event. The importance of the moment lies in the determination our choices make in what this unfolding will be. No matter how insignificant our action, how meaningless our thought, it serves to bring about all that has been, is and will be around. In the recognition of the insignificant lies the realization of its impossibility.
