I spoke to a man once, not too long ago. The sun was setting. The tide was coming in. There was an iridescent pink glow that was bathing the shores and the horizon. Everything seemed still. The sea is a very complex creature, much like everything in existence. I wonder what it must be like to be a sea, being present in all its capacities. Waving about all night and day, holding so much life within. It must be peaceful or tumultuous, depending on the season. Quite similar to what it’s like being a human. We are alike, us and the sea. Not surprising at all, considering every aspect of the universe is a manifestation of the divine…the good and bad, the animate and the inanimate. Everything is connected.
Back to my conversation with the man. We spoke about the nature of life, how everything must play it’s role in this epic comedy. Though at the moment it did not sound nearly as profound.
When a shark finds you in open water, it might eat you , not because it hates you, but because it is hungry and you are food. If a fisherman finds a shark and traps it ,he might eat it, not because he hates the shark ,but because he is hungry and it is food. He spoke of how plants have emotions and consciousness, and how at the end of the day, we eat them too. Existence is the universe consistently finding sustenance within itself. We must sustain ourselves in order to take part in this very cycle of being.
The manner in which the universe consistently and continuously finds sustenance within itself never ceases to amaze me. We must consume each other to survive. The leopard must hunt, the fisherman must fish, the gazelle must graze, and the grass must draw sustenance from the soil. All this consumption, and each victim having a semblance of consciousness knowing it is in danger of ceasing to exist at any given moment, each one is alive, each one is made up of particles in constant motion. That is all that makes up life, particles and energy. How mundane.