As he walked toward the library building and the round oak colored table where he would take on his self appointed task, his eyes darted about. No one except a sole bicyclist was traversing his horizon.
The man on the bicycle was moving quickly and with focus. His head was down only occasionally bopping up to see if he was nearing an obstacle. As he peddled the man on that new and shining bike had a head filled with thoughts about the upcoming school year. His lease started on August 1st and while classes would not start for several weeks, he knew he had plans and preparations to undertake. This taut and athletic rider was entering his junior year. The pressure of getting admitted into his major and focusing on what track he would be taking were consuming his time and his mind space . The bike and this ride on a warm evening would allow him to turn it all off.
The walker watched the bicyclist pass. The older man felt a tinge of sadness. Once he had been someone very like the solitary rider on this warm night. Decades ago he had made choices, some direct and some simply by inaction. As the bike and its rider disappeared into the distance the writer walking to his station pulled himself back to the here and now. He banished thoughts of trash can parties in the dorm and the pleasant part of the aftermath of such events. The soft and gooey parts, not the hangovers and barfing. He focused on where his next footstep should fall. He looked up and saw the colors, experienced nature’s wonder. There they were, a metaphor for where he stood in life.
Two groups of blossoms off the same stalk were right there in his field of visions. One group of the flowers were thriving, bright and purple. These blooms stood out, a beacon to the attention of the human eye and most likely to the senses of honey bees. But time was coming into mid-August. Time for the bright blooms was quickly passing. As he looked carefully at the almost glowing blooms he saw they were nestled among faded petals. Wispy and shriveled like thin tissue paper that had dried, these blooms hung. The blooms he was now focused on were the ghosts of summer hanging on the stems and stalks they shared with the bright purple eye catchers.
Stepping back the walking man grabbed a quick photo of the duality present here on this warm August night. He mused to himself. His mind told him there is in all life the necessary requirement of death. In all success there are the seeds of the unraveling. In every blossom there is both the reality of beauty and the inevitability of decay. He was not conflicted or saddened or touched by any of those harsh emotions that come with acknowledging the inevitable. Tonight he was struck with the unique joy these intertwined blossoms, the bright and full of life and the dry and faded, had given him. Purple and faded white were a lesson to any eye open to the experience.
“Joy seems to come unbidden, just erupting at the oddest times. It isn’t possible to plan for joy, yet when it comes, it is an unmistakable overflowing of feelings of delight in the world and its mysteries.” -Roshi Pat Enkyo O'Hara
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