At three o’clock this morning I thought of something really thoughtful to blog about today. It was right on point, something deeply meaningful and insightful. I was really excited to write about it and explore the idea further.
I have no recollection what that idea was.
This happened to me a couple of days ago, too. I woke under darkness of night with a flash of inspiration. I’d come to some breakthrough that seemed to particularly transform my thinking, as if I’d finally found enlightenment beneath my Bodhi tree.
I repeated a phrase to myself, over and over, confident that it would stick with me in the morning light, that the meaning wouldn’t melt away with the dew.
But I can’t quite find it any more. It was something about change. Something like, don’t seek to change the way things are, but the way they should be. I don’t know. Those words seem hollow now. Like the discarded carapace of a creature which has since moved on. The understanding is gone.
This may seem tragic, like a work of art destroyed by fire. Or perhaps just frustrating, that moment when a name is on the tip of your tongue but you can’t quite get there.
But there is something beautiful in these fleeting thoughts as well. Like a sand mandala, painstakingly assembled then breathlessly destroyed. All flowers must fade.
In the wee hours of the morning, these ideas pop with urgency and vibrance. Then they fade into the ether, gone but not destroyed.
That moment is part of me now. It joins a billion other moments – raw, honest, nondescript moments – which burst into life then flickered into the past. Gone but not destroyed.
