Memento Mori

This is an experience I had while on tour this fall. It altered my perspective. It changed me.

I'm sitting on the beach, overlooking the surf as it crashes into the rocks, pushing to shore seaweed, shells, and all sorts of things from the deep. The air is cool and moving, the sound around me is peaceful. The sky, blue, specked with clouds ranging from white to grey to purple to green. This moment is perfect. Everything seems right. I want to become part of the great vastness that is before me, to become one with it. I want to contain it all within me, and be contained with in it. Everything is perfect. Except I am alone. The one person I want to share this moment with is not here. She is a thousand miles away. The moment turns bittersweet. It is so close to perfect, but will never get there. All I want is heaven on earth. All I want is that moment of perfection. It will never come. I am climbing a latter that has no final height. There is no finish to the race I run. There is no great supreme moment. Not until I die. Why can't I just die, right here, right now, and be done with the struggles of life? I think about my own death a lot, not in a morbid way, but I think about it. If that perfect moment is just around the corner, why am I not there? So close and yet beyond me. Why must I go through life, with all its joys and sorrows? I know that pure joy awaits me when I die. But I suppose I can't know the joy without the sorrow. There is no black without white, there is no noise without quiet. So I will wait, and until that day, when all my tears are wiped away I will struggle, and feel the joy of overcoming the struggle.