YUGEN

a deep understanding of the universe

This blog note is more of a reminiscence, on that which has deeply become a part of me. One that has let me perceive many things I was not aware my mere human brain was capable of. This is an experience from two years ago when I was in hostel returning home for vacations. To let go of the four-walled room and embarking on a short journey home was the best thing that had happened to me in those college years.

‘To reflect’ fuels you unlike anything, for me the process of endorsing myself to every second spent traveling has always been nostalgic.

It was a hot afternoon, once the driver started the engine, I knew this was going to be one hell of a ride… one that was going to break the chains and unleash a spark, a spark that could ignite every step hitherto never taken. I belong to the common category of humans that find long journeys of sitting in the last seat of a bus an audacity of a kid who’s stupid-smart. Since I was one, I ended up puking in the bus turmoil (high five if you have a thing for last seats too).

In no time I was out of the city and it had begun to pour heavily… every drop of rain that traced the huge glass mapping a pattern and leaving the AC bus foggy (yep!… I did draw on the foggy glass). As I sat there by the window, letting my eyes dissolve the light that came from every direction trying to freeze all of this light into the neurons of my brain, I experienced an unusual sense of knowing that I exist. The knowledge of life happening as I sat there looking out of the window deep into the rain-soaked forest was prodigious. I teared down for life had just taken another turn. A turn that revealed its magnificence.

There certainly is something about sitting in a bus cooled to temperatures that make you sick, also the reason behind why you an experience existential crisis. Traveling for each one of us has its own beauty and perspective to it, we all go through it in many ways… to know that you can speak to your inner self is a gift. The moment you begin to spend time for yourself going through your thoughts having conversations with yourself, that’s what I call home. The place you can crack a morbid joke, feel sorry for yourself, be the most powerful being Earth has ever seen, the one you wish to be as you rediscover every nuance of your thoughts you’ve built from the time you became a conscious part of this planet.

After some four hours of travel, turmoil and thoughts the bus came to a halt for a 30-minute break. Initially, I was scared, scared to get down from the shelter of the bus. Questions like ‘what if someone robs me?’ or ‘what if the bus leaves me?’ kept bothering me but the minute I saw this bird fly across my window I made up my mind, built-in  the courage to get down… it was the same nervousness I felt when I said goodbye to my mother at the hostel gate when I first got there. The minute I got to the door of the bus, I was taken away by the splendiferous sight. Inhaling the breath-taking view as I inhaled a deep breath gave me a sense of what pure bliss truly means. I involuntarily walked to the nearby coffee store that ground coffee to its finest, spreading the aroma and attracting customers. I bought a cup of coffee and walked to the corner of the hill keeping my bus in sight.

The imposing beauty of nature was elevated by what I saw – a crystal-clear lake surrounded by tall tropical trees that were being reflected into its still water. The still water was being disturbed by the snow-white cranes that kept diving once in a while preying on the fishes gliding in the water. I was engulfed in the dazzling beauty of nature but the jitty feeling of being abandoned on the hill by the bus reminded me to get back on it.

Now, I was back on the road refined with what nature had to present to me, lost in thoughts trying to convince myself that everything I saw was real. What came after this is a memory that uplifted my consciousness. I consider myself ‘a dot in the multiverse’. A dot that is insignificantly significant in the infinities of the past, present, and future… this feeling somehow grew extraordinarily.
Sunset is deeply enrooted in all of us, with the most amazing power to unfurl an emotional context, one that gets each and every human hard, one that keeps reminding you that you belong to nature as it does to you, indeed a subliminal extravagance. What I saw that evening left me flabbergasted. To this day, the memory is afresh as beautiful as the first time I saw it. A never-ending sky covered in clouds of multiple hues and in between a radiating red giant ball of sun sinking as if to passionately kiss the horizon.

Traveling alone for the first time made me brave. The journey somehow has offered me a whole new perspective towards life, one that makes me embrace it. In a retrospect, it is an unconscious reminder to live every day to my satisfaction.