Cairns

Colombo, Sri Lanka

Today I ran along the beach and climbed on a rock that jutted out into the sand. From here I could see it all: the high-rises, the littoral life, the train tracks that went in circles, the fishers mending their nets, the trash, the dogs curled in the shade of fiberglass boats. As I turned around, Krishna startled me with his sword and necklace of heads, and a hand-chiseled Buddha touched the earth. At the edge of it all, an altar of gods, placed there in hopes that within the noise, I would recognize its salience. What does a butterfly remember about being a caterpillar? What cairns have our past lives left for us on this pathless path? I wake each morning like a newborn child, and cast about for meaning but mistake it for hunger.

We too can leave signposts of salience for our future selves. In the dizzying freedom at the edge of all possibilities, a signpost might take the form of the sound of an owl, or the brief, eternal moment when a school of hammerheads pass overhead. These are a gift from the past that is grounded in the instantaneous, and they can guide us towards a future we will not see.

There is a mode of being that our civilization demands of its adults. We narrow our focus on the information relevant to goals that we rarely stop to question. The non-present tugs heavily on our attention, and the future has become a collective fear rather than a community garden. We must bear witness to this, and then ask the earth to bear witness to our response. The revolution will take place in the quality of your attention and in the softness of your steps, in your inhale of wonder and your exhale of uncertainty. Your life can be a signpost, too.