Sunday, October 23, 2011

Reflections

Three weeks ago, Alison and I decided to sell the house I have lived in for nearly 31 years, which needless to say involved a great deal of de-cluttering,selling most of our furniture and letting go of STUFF, which no doubt in our newly found lightened, if not enlightened but homeless state, will allow us the freedom the explore more.

It is as if I have to let go of the past to make room for the future.

As I applied this principle of making room on my computer's C Drive, I came across the piece below that I wrote on the occasion of the tragic death of two infant boys.

LIFE AND IMPERMANENCE

All life is impermanent. We are all children of the Earth, and, at some time, she will take us back again. We are continually rising from Mother Earth, being nurtured by her, and then returning to her. Plants are born, live for a period of time, and then return to the Earth and in doing so, they nurture our gardens. We humans are unique in our knowledge of our own immortality, and our ability to deal with our own passing through reason. We also have choices about and some sense of what we leave behind.

Today we are here to reflect on the passing of two souls who did not yet have the awareness of the meaning of life. We are also here to comfort two parents and in some way all of us, who have the ability to reflect on the imponderable question of “why”.

Leslie and Susan from their meeting and deciding to share their lives, from their determined plans to have a family, from their earliest knowledge of life having been formed, from the moment of knowing there were two fertilized eggs, to the surprise of anticipating two tiny males, with each passing week watching them grow, planning for their care, the myriad of details, its hard to conceive of two beings more anticipated by two parents than whose passing we are here to observe today…alas, they are no more.

We are grieving with Leslie and Susan… for what might have been: the hands they longed to touch, the faces they longed to kiss. Their arms hold no small lives; their hearts are filled with sadness. We are all confounded by the overwhelming sense of loss of never seeing the world through four eyes and two inquiring minds, to not knowing what they might have looked like, what they might have thought and what legacy they might have left behind.
Our rational minds crave order. We have a tendency to think that life is a linear progression, where we go from A to B to C and so on, and if don’t get to B we can't get to C. Events like this, tell us that order can be an illusion. If we think carefully about our own lives, we know that the pattern of our past is often serendipitous and accidental as when fertilization formed the miracle of two lives; and the mystery of why they are no more. We don't know why.
Perhaps our challenge in life is not to know precisely where we are going, but to prepare ourselves so when those wonderful moments of serendipity occur or when we are confronted with mysterious painful ones, such as the passings we are observing today, at times like these we can listen to our hearts and know what it is we need to do. So in remembering the loss of two tiny souls, let us reflect on the joys, the excitement, the anticipation, let us remember how their possibility fertilized our imaginations and hope that their memory will yet take us to a higher plane, where our hearts can roam free and where we can listen to the little voices inside all of us. Life is impermanent; memories live for ever.


September 23, 2003

Finally, our trip in Northern India and Nepal

As the first taste of winter has arrived in Toronto, and am planning this year's winter getaway,I am reminded that I left the blog incomplete. I have no excuse. Below is our route, should anyone like to follow our fading tire tracks.

INDIA

January 8 – February 15, 2011

Date Destination Distance
Km
Jan 7 Perth - Kuala Lumpur 0
Jan 7 Delhi 0
Jan 8 Delhi - Gurgaon 0
Jan 9 Palwal 72
Jan 10 Vrindavan 87
Jan 11 Vrindavan 20
Jan 12 Agra 78
Jan 13 Agra 0
Jan 14 Agra 0
Jan 15 Agra 0
Jan 16 Dhaulpur 61
Jan 17 Gwalior 69
Jan 18 Datia 76
Jan 19 Orchhe 50
Jan 20 Orchhe 0
Jan 21 Nowgong 110
Jan 22 Khajaraho 71
Jan 23 Khajaraho 0
Jan 24 Khajaraho 0
Jan 25 Panna 47
Jan 26 Satna 73
Jan 27 Chittrakoot 83
Jan 28 Chittrakoot 0
Jan 29 Allahabad 137
Jan 30 Allahabad 0
Jan 31 Mirzapur 95
Feb 1 Varanasi 67
Feb 2 Varanasi 0
Feb 3 Varanasi 0
Feb 4 Varanasi 0
Feb 5 Varanasi 0
Feb 6 Varanasi 0
Feb 7 Sarnath 18
Feb 8 Sarnath 0
Feb 9 Sarnath 0
Feb 10 Sarnath 0
Feb 11 Sarnath 0
Feb 12 Gazipur 72
Feb 13 Dohrighat 81
Feb 14 Kushinagar 92
Feb 15 Gorakpur 57
TOTAL 1,516

1,516km in 21 full cycling days = 72km per day (average)

NEPAL

Feb 16 Sunali 100
Feb 17 Lumbini 26
Feb 18 Lumbini 15
Feb 19 Butwal 46
Feb 20 Tansen 40
Feb 21 Waling 62
Feb 22 Pokara 62
Feb 23 Pokara 0
Feb 24 Pokara 0
Feb 25 Bandipur
Feb 26 Bandipur
Feb 27 Malekhu 76
Feb 28 Kathmandu 46
Mar 1 Kathmandu 0
Mar 2 Kathmandu 0
Mar 3 Kathmandu 0
Mar 4 Kathmandu 0
Mar 5 Kathmandu 0
Mar 6 Kathmandu 0
Mar 7 Kathmandu 0
Mar 8 Kathmandu 0
Mar 9 Kathmandu 0
Mar 10 Kathmandu 0
Mar 11 Daman 0
Mar 12 Daman 0
Mar 13 Heteuda 57
Mar 14 Sauraha 74
Mar 15 Sauraha 0
Mar 16 Narayanghat 24
Mar 17 Butwal 118
Mar 18 Chatauta 66
Mar 19 Lahami 60
Mar 20 Kohalpur 118


1,136km in 18 full cycling days = 63km per day (average)


INDIA RIVISITED

Mar 27 Radrapur 100
Mar 28 Moradabad 75
Mar 29 Ghaziabad 14
Mar 30 Ghaziabad - IGI Airport 0
Mar 31 Toronto 0
TOTAL 189


GRAND TOTAL: India + Nepal 2,841km in 42 full cycling days = 68km per day