Asystole

All things considered, only asystole!

The Earth does not make the slightest hesitation in its rotation when a soul leaves a body. It is indifferent to the loss, not callous, to what it carries on its back while spinning spiritedly.

The blue sapphire-like giant structure, a chubby abode of billions, circles the sun and takes over a year to follow an almost circular path to complete its orbit. It has been doing this for a long time. Thinkers created the Gregorian calendar so that the rest of us can track the duration of this travel effortlessly. All the while, a steady tilt of 23.4 degrees during this long trip keeps its facade forever surprised, staring at the universe in awe. The subtle slant is only noticeable with the help of specialized scientific instruments; observing it without such equipment renders the inclination imperceptible. These thoughtful configurations with foresight—the lean, suspended body and the elliptical path in unison create seasons. Nourishment of our souls and bodies is directly proportional to the season’s blessings.

Unlike the swirling dervishes, our planet also revolves counterclockwise on an imaginary axis that passes through its north and south poles like a needle piercing a bead. During this 24-hour-long rotation, one slice faces the sun for half the hours while the opposite side remains in the dark. So, the result is a hide-and-seek play of day and night – an age-old sport like the Earth itself! It is comforting to think that the Earth knew our arrival, adorning the ground with beautiful landscapes and delicious food to welcome us.

The hardest part of living a single life is that we are merely the custodians of delimited time, the brutal autocrat skates into our lives while the Earth twirls. No one has touched, smelled, or seen it. No one can deny its existence. An unseen. Yet, it is as accurate as anything we know to be genuine. The evidence is flashing in signs, relics, or remains, such as the footprints on the sand from a traveler’s steps. But it silently and inevitably erodes its caretaker, squeeze after squeeze, drip by drip. Its verdict, the last call to exit from life, from the Earth, is never a whisper. There was never a place for doubt, though we implied one; it was always a matter of a ‘when’ rather than an ‘if.’ No matter the preparations, no one could escape alive.

Add a hundred years to our count of years, and there will only be a memory of us on faded paper. Or if we are beyond fortunate, a scrawl on moss-covered stone. Once we own this truth, what is next? A warning or prediction does not precede the “next”; rather, it is inherently an ambush, a startling turn of events or circumstances that always takes us by surprise. How can knowing the “next” be helpful when life is nothing but complications and endless events that have no simple solutions?

It does not seem that way, but a trade-off of our allotment of time is our presence, second by second, breath by breath. Our existence is as flighty as vapor that soars too swiftly without meaningful traces of its absence. Immediately after our first breath, the unwritten countdown to “evacuate” begins, relinquishing what we hold dear to our hearts. We don’t realize, until much later, that everything is only provisional! Despite our repeated attempts to extend the time through reasoned discussion and careful planning, the result is a quagmire of wasted time, consuming what amounts to approximately three billion human heartbeats—a substantial yet finite number that we inevitably count in our lifetime. The endowment of several billion moments in an average person’s life may seem enormous, but there is no option for a do-over in our lives. Only make do. It is the nature of the game we are in, but we are unaware of being in it. There is no, nor will there ever be, a pacifying answer to this riddle: On shifting clay, are we not stranded briefly until?