June 09, 2003
life
yoku mireba
nazuna hana saku
kakinekana
if you look closely
you will see the nazuna flower blooming
oh! i almost missed it!
-basho
This is my favorite haiku. For years I loved it but I never quite knew what it meant. I memorized it and said it many times, but it took a good four years or more for it to penetrate.
How wonderful it is to be alive! I don't know where I came from before I was born, and I don't know where I will go when I die. But this moment, oh how wonderful. I have nothing else here but the click-clack of my keyboard keys. We as people so often get so caught up in "life" that we never get to experince life.
We so often pursue happiness in all sorts of things. We wait for the good times to come. Once we get that job. Once I get married. Once I have that car. We forget the love and happiness that if we were lucky we experinced when we were a young child. The simple pleasure of having a dinner with family or friends that love one another. No television. No nervous chit-chat. Just that warm glow of people who truely care about one another. Wow. What a secret. Happiness. It is in the sunset, in the gurgle of the kitchen sink, in the ashes of ones father, and in the nazuna flower. Isn't this sense of self wonderful?
So person brighter than me explained to me about how all the snow flakes so different. Each and everyone a universe unto themselves. Oh, but a snowball right in the head! That is wonderful too!
Can you taste it? The taste in your mouth. It will be gone soon. All of life will be. Your death will come and so will mine. Why don't you give your mother a call and tell her that you love her?