A delicate sakura in the wind
(Photo credits: @luri.ph on Instagram)
As the years pass and I grow older, I become privy to many life-changing moments, one of them being the harrowing incident that cost two of my friends their lives. Somehow being a part of it, or because I was a part of it, I felt curiously detached but at the same time, closely connected to the trauma, distress and pain that was fluttering about me. Yet, with each trauma, distress and painful incident that I go through, I become strangely accepting of life, as if it's a wave that can't be tamed. I'm beginning to see life as a butterfly that flits through the air to land on a soft flower, only to be blown away at any moment.
I am happy, grateful even, for every sorrowful moment because in each of them, I was given a precious opportunity to learn about the fragility of life and what it means to be vulnerable, to touch the dew in the morning and be amazed that I lived to see another day, to see the smile on a person's face and know that I was lucky enough to be a part of it. These are simple things that we overlook and take for granted in the hustle and bustle of life, but that are no less beautiful and important.
Life feels like it has come a full circle for me. I feel like I've lived and died and lived again. To understand the fragility of life, means to know what it is to be alive. The youthful frivolous confidence that young people are endowed with, seems almost a tight slap in the face of a man on his last breath. Yet we forgive them for it because we know that without this brash confidence, we would never have experienced all the wonderful things that we did when we were young. It is only through the privilege of time and experience that we come to appreciate how truly fragile life is, like a delicate sakura, that wilts away once its prime is over. And like the delicate sakura, the meaning in having blossomed at all, was simply for those few fleeting days of full-bloomed beauty, to know that it was at the height of its own charm.
It withers away just as fast as it blossomed, consummating, to live another day, another life.
And so closes a chapter of my life.