An Ode To The Immeasurable Mystery Of Life
By Jennifer Healey
To move through the world transparently—
Wouldn’t that just be nice?
To not pin things down
And tie them up,
Wouldn’t it be a relief—
To not have to identify
With everything,
And sometimes even anything?
I’d like to just live in the world,
Just for a glimpse,
Without needing to be
Of the world,
Without a label or a word
For everything.
Are the dead
More alive
Than the living?
I wonder if we should
Stop wondering about everything.
If I think a little less,
Or a little more,
Does it change who I am,
Really, at the core?
What’s underneath
Is underneath,
No matter what I throw
On top of it.
Maybe if I stop describing it,
I can start living it.
Maybe life will start living me.
When I stop trying to close in on
My self,
Trying to nail down the truth,
And open up to the
Incomprehensible mystery,
I can join the truth.
Am I so hypnotized
By what happens
That I’ve forgotten
A vital half, missing?
No.
Not aligned with a greater reality,
Simply needing to look
Through my eyes
Instead of with them.
I feel the guidance to
Hold the truth
That I’m living and dying
All at the same time.
It’s a paradox,
Complexity,
Whole and wondrous
In its own right.
If we look out
Into the vast night,
There’s more than what is seen:
There’s the unseen,
The unheard,
The unfathomable half,
Without which
There would be no path
For the stars to align
Into portraits painted
Across the sky—
Nothing for us to
Place words upon,
And nothing for the eye.
To think that I am only
What I think
Would be a lie.
Even space
Would like to look at itself
Without being called a sky.
“Just look,”
It might whisper,
“Without needing to know,
You will know.”
Perhaps if I looked through my eyes
And not with them,
I’d be looking at myself,
Wherever it is I go.
That’s the paradox,
The complexity,
Of understanding that the soul
Doesn’t need to know,
In order to know.
Only in stillness
Am I present inside
This great mystery.