Everything is becoming otherwise

Maybe we’re all just prisms, turning ordinary light and latent consciousness into individual beams, forming a rainbow of humanity.

Or maybe we’re all different parts of the same dream.

It’s hard to articulate how time and life have moved through you, how all of your experiences have seemed so real and yet gone, passed and past. Ephemeral yet visceral.

Joseph Goldstein, in talking about impermanence, often cites this quote from the Buddha, that “everything is becoming otherwise.” Tragic and beautiful. Uncomfortably true.

The days are getting shorter, we’re approaching the winter solstice, a natural inflection point is nearing, and I feel a deep and parallel rhythm. Winter, not when things die so much as exhale with a sigh of monochromatic grey.

We all want to live in the frame of living a wild and precious life, but it’s daunting to imagine an unshackled self, isn’t it?

I was reminded this week that every voice means something to someone, and sometimes a lot of someones. Every act of creativity is a private celebration of the now that you have, a gentle angling of the prism. We’re all shining and shimmering as we become otherwise.