06/10/2022
FLASHBACK FRIDAY: Taipei, Taiwan - December 2005
About a year after my mom passed away, way too young, and with way too much life ahead of her, I was seeking to heal from the loss, halfway across the world in Taipei, Taiwan. Really, I was just trying to escape from the pain, the seeming arbitrary cold hand of God, or whatever you want to embrace as moving the mechanics of this universe, this life … I was searching to make sense of it all, to justify the unjustifiable, which is an impossible feat and a ridiculous quest.
I didn’t get it then but I was focused on the wrong bit, I was missing the point.
Reflected in these buddhas that lined the rooftop of this temple outside of Taipei … every figure linked together, facing dual directions at the same time, one in darkness, one in the light, or one facing out, one facing in, one hand with an empty cup, one extended to receive more, or one hand with a full cup, one hand ready to give more, every visage content with the contents of their position.
There is no sense to be made of unimaginable loss. There is only the honoring of what one has in hand, while one has it. Everything changes, transforms, lives, dies, lives. Acceptance of the flow is the true gift, because if you always focus on what you have, while you have it, you will always be abundant, will always be grateful, and will always have plenty to share.
Here we are, in year 2022, coming up on the 18th anniversary of her transition, and I am still in pain, and still in love with this duality of existence, the yin and the yang, how there is always a little bit of dark in the light, and a little bit of light in the dark, and how they are endlessly cycling into and transforming one another. Death and life, destruction and creation intimately linked, one always turning into the other. Think of the many deaths and rebirths we have already experienced in our small existences. I would not trade any of it. Even though I still miss my mother everyday, she is still very much alive in my memory. And without losing her, I doubt I would have ever launched myself into the world like I have. I would not be carrying her in my heart everyday and in every move I make. So I have no regrets, or wish for something different. I will not go as far as to justify the loss, but I do embrace it, accepting that in the darkness of what has been lost, there has also been some light to show me the way through.
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