The liquid-eyed poet John Keats, dead at 25 from tuberculosis: “There is nothing stable in the world; uproar’s your only music.” In the same vein, from an old hymn often sung at funerals I presided over when I was in religious life: “Time, like an ever-rolling stream, / Bears all its sons away; / They fly forgotten, as a dream / Dies at the opening day.” No-one and nothing stay the same. Not even for an instant.
Life is sweet and we cling to it, but it’s entirely possible that humans won’t make the evolutionary cut. Would this be tragic? No. Well we know that nothing lasts. Therein lies the sweetness.
The late great jazz drummer Jerry Granelli called it “nowness.” It’s when our experience of the present moment deepens to the point where the twinned impediments of past and future cease to matter.
Life is hard. If this is deeply felt and truly understood, it ceases to be so.
Eastern wisdom teaches that we awaken in the depthless interval between two thoughts.
Men's Work 