The fleeting frozen moment

Often when we take a break from our busy lives, we put our restlessness to rest and contemplate about our existence, our life. We somehow feel lost and try to ascertain our future and evaluate our past. But life's totally uncertain and we actually end up wasting our time in answering these questions, thinking about past and worrying about future. I know, to have done this is typically humane. But then I stumbled upon some amazing perspective from a great philosopher - Alan Watts. And I was amazed!

He says:
We learn, very thoroughly though far less explicitly, to identify ourselves with an equally conventional view of “myself.” For the conventional “self” or “person” is composed mainly of a
history consisting of selected memories, and beginning from the moment of parturition. According to convention, I am not simply what I am doing now. I am also what I have done, and my conventionally edited version of my past is made to seem almost more the real “me” than what I am at this moment. For what I am seems so fleeting and intangible, but what I was is fixed and final. It is the firm basis for predictions of what I will be in the future, and so it comes about that I am more closely identified with what no longer exists than with what actually is!

After reading this, I was like "WHOA!". I was overwhelmed with his analogies and I still am. But I get his point. That I am neither defined by my past nor by my future. As for the nature of life, it is uncertain and not everything is in your control. May be nothing is!

I was also super impressed by his another analogy of our futile attempts to ascertain our lives -

Yet if there were a bird who first wanted to examine the size of the sky, or a fish who first wanted to examine the extent of the water–and then try to fly or to swim, they will never find their own ways in the sky or water. This is not a philosophy of not looking where one is going; it is a philosophy of not making where one is going so much more important than where one is that there will be no point in going.

The Fleeting Frozen Moment

It made complete sense to me. Neither one should become a complete idiot by ignoring/planning for future, nor a obsessive person who only contemplates about future and loses the present. It is a delicate balance one has to maintain. But how often we succeed is again not under our control. We just gotta flow through the stream, come what may.

His philosophy had inspired me to write something after a long time. I processed some old pics of mine and I went back to the night which had spent under the stars to come up with this:

In the middle of nowhere, you lay down at ease
Longing for the long forgotten, the elusive peace
Feels like being lost in the vastness of the seas
Nothing to find, yet holding the keys
Something moves, you try to capture it, but it flees!
Something soulful which neither binds nor frees
It feels alive yet soulless like a breeze
Which neither gives up, nor willing to seize
What is this bewilderment, what is this tease?
When did it began? When will it cease?
Oh the tranquil moment! Please stay! Please!

Another Fleeting Frozen Moment

There are these moments which remain etched/frozen in our memories and  in the end we have to get back to our humane idiosyncrasies to relive them ignoring the fact that it is not "the reality". Such is life. Huh.