Stiggins

I often converse with a ghost, but rarely remember what we discussed! It has no shape, yet its presence is weighty. It doesn’t speak out loud, but I can hear its voice persistently and clearly. Our conversations are argumentative. Exhaustion from the dispute ruins all my energy. Yet, there are no concrete results when I investigate to uncover who this opponent truly is! I can outrun my shadow and seek refuge in the light, but the phantom’s presence is in the countless wrinkles of my brain. And, it dictates relentlessly, as if it is sure that the world’s end is near. I cannot withdraw entirely from the whispers. All efforts fail miserably. Do we all carry burdens as ghouls? Shouldn’t we all learn to cohabit with our ghosts, if they exist? Instead, we preferred to remain in hiding and became skilled at it, but for how long? Isn’t it an entire lifetime for the charade to continue for too long?

Who listens to soliloquies, if anyone? With or without an audience, days change, seasons shift, and life becomes more complicated with anxieties about which direction to take, what to keep or discard, when to say no or yes, and when hopes and experiences conflict frequently. Being alive is such a wordless, silent, and fatal diagnosis! Everyone is self-reflecting, engaging in a therapy session with their rational mind, and praying for the extraordinary. Efforts may pause the struggles for some fortunate few at the rainbow’s end! However, specifying the deceptive and evading “end” or “finale” is always challenging. Every breath, gaze, step, or smile could interchangeably be anyone’s last or next. This perplexity makes life heavier. The serenity of the heart evaporates from the false flurry of urgency that oscillates between comparisons of things getting better or worse. We focus only on the immediate, and the important becomes distorted and imprecise.

Time, however, speeds up, and every breath brings us closer to the end, seemingly without warning, in an instant. The barb and the battle rage inside every cell, without a victory for the self and its hologram. For eons, saints, rishis, preachers, and hermits have analyzed scrolls to discover ways to ease the conflict between the tangible self and its expression in the real world. For consolation, some suggest we offer alms at the altar, but how much is undetermined. Some assume that increasing knowledge, guided by the North Star, leads in the right direction. All suggestions provide merely temporary comfort.

Meanwhile, have we not emptied our precious “Al-Girbah” for sacrifice? Have we not offered alms and conferred constellations? Isn’t being alive a silent, yet fatal, diagnosis? Is it only in our imaginations that we know our final destination but have not made peace with it?