On Existence.

I received news that my dad had passed away. I thought I was mentally and emotionally prepared since his health was deteriorating more each month. Knowing he was not in great shape, I kept close watch on his state by maintaining daily contact. He was always such a great conversationalist and was always mighty strong in spirit— the sort that lifts you up by just his pleasant tone of voice, because they are genuinely happy to be speaking with you… making you feel valuable and cared about.

Each phone call began getting shorter and shorter. Our last one lasted maybe 10 seconds. My gut told me to book a flight to go see my dad— so I did, I booked the next available departure. Immediately feeling a slight sense of relief that I would get to be there.

Unfortunately, that’s not how it worked out. About two hours after I booked my flight, I received the news that my dad passed away.

Oh did I overestimate my level of preparedness.

My being could not believe it. A sort of glitch took over, where all I could say was; “Ok” and pause… “ok”…another pause… finally, one last uttered “ok” as I was leaving the room to walk into yet another room to simply sit on the floor and look out the window staring into a complete void— I was lost in empty space, far away.

Five days after all of this, after visiting his old apartment, sleeping where he used to sleep, picking up all his belongings, closing old accounts, releasing his ashes on the ocean as he requested many times— now…I’m here and this is what I have to say:

As I sit on the floor at this airport, many thoughts swirl around. My desire to write has not left but there has been an absence of epiphanies, let’s say.

The last one I had was perhaps 2 weeks ago.

It’s a bit hard to explain. They usually are, aren’t they? It’s like extracting something from a completely different world and finding words from this world to match a fair description of the other topsy-turvy yet highly sophisticated one. No to mention that words fail us often because even though they do help transform our reality, words still flirt with our natural faculty of subjectivity and because of this maybe everything I wish to say here next gets lost in translation — there’s even a chance that this has already occurred and that my message is already slightly tainted with my own biases or subjectivity, and therefore not pure.

“Nothing is pure… or everything is pure because nothing is pure.”

In any case, what I wanted to share — and perhaps this might not come as a surprise, or maybe it does and it resonates with your intuition — is that life breathes.

Existence or life — breathes. I’m using this to depict or illustrate the ebb and flow of existence.

It inhales and exhales, as it inhales some things are and as it exhales other things are, but the important thing here is that both still ARE…they don’t stop existing just because they take turns.

Up and down, black and white, visible or hidden, in or out, it really is all happening simultaneously all the time, self-causing the existence of its predecessor — infinitely. These are just the extreme results of all the elements that lay in the middle to achieve these.

From a “yes” to a “no” there are so many layers of thoughts, ideas, emotions, physiological transformations, that may or may not happen rapidly for one to detect them. During that time, you have both the “yes” and the “no” or maybe you argue that you don’t because you have not made a decision, however, just because you haven’t made a decision, does not mean you do not have both the “yes” and the “no”.

Everything that IS, is followed unavoidably by that which ISN’T.

Holding on to the simple example of the “yes” and “no” — as we go about this reality, we will want to land one of these… we will want exactness and no grey areas because this reality almost demands it, well… humans demand it. Yet, there are certain circumstances when both the “yes” and the “no” will be interwoven and therefore both will be the reality; the momentary truth. We may (we do) resist to no avail when this occurs, I believe mainly because we cannot comprehend how this could be — it just is. It’s a glimpse into a much deeper, or superior, reality.

This is why it can be hard to pin down a “truth” for such a long time, because information changes, transitions from inhaling to exhaling and then it repeats itself all over again.