Seeing Beyond the Spoke to See the Wheel

Quite often in life (the small amount of life I have experienced), I have found myself questioning why things happen the way they do. Why was I, of all my siblings, the one to be gay? Why did the bullies pick me to haze and torture? Why was I the one to suffer from depression to the point of wanting my life to be over and for my heart to stop beating? Why was I the one in my family to not serve a full-time mission (two years for the LDS church), come home early, and question the family faith? Why did all of this happen to me and leave me suffering?

In the previous post, I quoted from a book called Think on These Things, in which the essays/talks of Krishnamurti have been translated and published. In the essay "Freedom and Love," Krishnamurti is talking about life and our need to understand it. He says, "You must understand the whole life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing, and dance, and write poems, and suffer, and understand; for all that is life" (25). To Kirshnamurti, everything about life is in the experience and in understanding of every single part of it.

In the same essay, Krishnamurti talks about seeing life like a wheel. He says we try to understand the wheel through one spoke, but that one spoke doesn't make up the wheel. The same can be said of life. We try to understand life through one single event, but one event, one moment of suffering cannot explain what life is and what is meant for us.

All my questions amount to singular events I am trying to explain life through and question why I was chosen to suffer. What I have come to see through the words of Krishnamurti is: why NOT me? Every event in my life has brought me to this moment in time. I am who I am because of the experiences, the sufferings, and the events in my life. I am the man who I am blessed to be because of each spoke on my wheel that allows my wheel to turn. So, the new question I ask is why NOT me? What am I going to learn about life that will free me someday from the cycle of suffering?

As each new sun rises, I will "read," "look at the skies," "sing," "dance," "write poems," "suffer," and "understand." I will sing praises to the universe for every experience. In my attempt to understand and live freely life, I will strive to see the wheel and not just a single spoke. Namaste.

Impermanence: Learning to Change with Grace

In the novel The Men From the Boys by William J. Mann, the characters are struggling to find the path that they are supposed to be on and struggling to find the passion in their lives again. One of the characters, Jeff, after struggling with change and wanting to have things stay the same, says, "There's a certain beauty to ambiguity. It's only then that we take control over our lives...But really, I think we can't know all the time what it is we're supposed to do. There's no way--not anymore--for us to think anything is ever going to stay the same. But we can trust that we'll do the best we can, and I like to think there will be people who love us who will help" (342). Jeff comes to realize that no matter how hard he struggles to maintain continuity and no matter how hard he tries to stick to the script that he think is written for this life, everything changes and nothing is permanent.

All through my twenties, and I guess part of my later teenage years, I have been struggling to find the passion I see in the lives of others and have been struggling to find permanence in this world, but I have grown to understand, lately, that life is not permanent and is full of impermanence. Everything changes. The weather never stays the same and changes from moment to moment. The seasons change; one season is colder or warmer than the last. The flowers grow in the spring and die in the fall. And all that we are changes with the epiphanies, the deaths of loved ones, the love we experience, and the life we live. We all change and are impermanent, but change is a good thing.

Through the changes that we experience, we come to experience life in new ways. If we can take the positive out of those experiences and epiphanies, we we learn to look at what we have now with new eyes every moment of the day. Life is an experience of change and we need to accept that change as a universal. When we fight change, we fight the tides of life and we become embittered because life isn't sticking to the script that we thought was permanent and written in the stars.

The key for me, in learning to accept change and impermanence, is learning that I am fallible and will make mistakes, but if I do the best I can, no one can hold it against me. Loved ones will surround me and will take care of me when I suffer. Loved ones will surround me and will celebrate with me when I achieve those moments of happiness and epiphanies. There will be "people who love us who will help" us get through the changes. People who will be there to lift our heads when we falter. People who will hold our hands when we are scared of the changes. People who will walk for us when we can't walk any longer. And people to love us through it all. We will learn to change and we will learn to love, laugh, and live that much more and that much deeper.