A cluster of moments

Have you ever noticed the froth of foam that borders ocean waves?
As they lazily lick our feet on the sand, have you ever peered into the cluster of assorted-sized bubbles that make up this foam?

If we look closely into this gathering of unsteady bubbles, we notice our reflection in them. Yes. Each one of those bubbles - tiny and miniscule, carries our reflection – tiny and miniscule.

As long as I can remember, I have squinted into this cluster of bubbles to find my replications - head larger, body elongated, eyes curious, staring back. Tiny ones in the tiny bubbles, slightly bigger ones in the bigger bubbles - always in the center, always somewhat stretched out.

Each time it awakens a sense of wonder, a sense of infinite, a sense of being part of nature, a sense of being part of a larger whole. And trifle as it may be, I have experienced a sense of being everywhere in nature. I must be – if I am part of even the most trivial foam on the waves. 

And as quickly as my sense of importance rises, it disappears with a quicker pace as the bubbles burst and the waves disappear die their slow death in the sand, taking with them all those tiny me (mes?). But when I stare at my wet sandy feet, I know another wave will caress them soon, with more reflections – reminding me that I am still a part of all this.

The cycle never breaks. The bubbles in their effervescence and impermanence, continue with permanence, to contain a tiny part of my existence and then wash it away.

We were at the beach some days ago. I smiled as I stared at the tiny “mes” and pointed them out to my girl. We gazed into the foamy bubbles at our feet.

All at once and for the first time, I realized that my life was really no different.
My life was nothing more than a cluster of moments – good and bad, easy and hard, joyful and sad. Oddly enough it made me feel better.

I had been trying to wrap my head around a recent diagnosis – turning it into a huge giant sized mutant bubble. Perhaps those exist too. But nature was telling me different. Sure, some bubbles are larger than others, some bubbles burst quicker than others, but the bubbles all had me, and they were all going to be washed away. There was no holding on to the good ones, and the bad ones skulked away in the same manner.

A lot had happened over the summer and my head seems to be reeling from all of it. Yet, nature was telling me it was all just one bubble.

“Okay Nature, it was more like a hundred”, my mind replied indignantly.
“What is a cluster of a hundred bubbles in the larger scope of things?” nature seemed to ask back.

We are made of nature. We are a reflection of nature. Nature is made of us. Nature is a reflection of us. And the proof lay in the foam on my feet.

In that foam, was the bubble containing the sadness I felt about a recent diagnosis… next to it (the big one, of course) was the worry I felt about my future and that of my loved-ones…next to it was another bubble containing the laughter I felt watching a ten-year-old’s mad antics in the water…next to it was…

Yes. I was in each of those bubbles and my life was all there - in that cluster of bubbles. And each bubble got the same treatment from nature. There was comfort in the cyclical nature, there was comfort in detachment, there was comfort in moving on, there was comfort in impermanence and all clichés about impermanence being the only permanence.

And despite the comfort I found in this wisdom, I also knew that this bubble of wisdom would also soon burst, and another bubble of worry or groundlessness or sadness was likely to show up.

So, is that all we have? A cluster of bubbles? A cluster of moments – fickle, fleeting, beautiful, ugly...

So, if all we have really is a cluster of moments, then that is all this blog should be. That is all this blog can be.

I’m not convinced I still have the sunny optimism of years ago that will look only at the happy bubbles - iridescent with refraction and tiny rainbows inside as the sun hits them. But from what nature tells me, there also aren’t any black scary giant bubbles, even if they may seem so.

This blog is a cluster of moments. Of intense-noticing, of quick jottings, of sensory overload, of thought, of emotion, of laughter, of bubbles… and they are all the same… quick, effervescent, evanescing… filled with so much, filled with nothing…