The elephant in the room

How come no one is talking about it? All these people that I meet throughout the day and not one of them brings it up. The elephant in the room. The one elephant. The great elephant! That we are here, incarnated form, spiralling at crazy speed through a universe garden of stars. Each a unique expression of the one moment, form made animate, pushing up against and through the great wave of time and space that washes over us - an impossible tide of strangeness and wonder. Isn’t anyone just a tiny bit freaked out by having this frail, strong, unfathomably complex body as an anchor for a few soap bubble years as our quite possibly immortal souls navigate this eternity on our way to complete and certain annihilation in the heart of light from which we are born? Hasn’t anyone noticed? Hellooooo….. is there anybody out there? I know its hard to drop it into conversation, like ‘I hear you got yourself a new job..... and by the way just how the fuck is it going with handling the weird, wonderful, complex miracle of your temporal, physical existence?... oh, and nice hat!’
I’ve tried bringing it up sometimes at parties or at the bus stop but the looks I get leave me wondering about my own sanity and whether I should just relax, shut up and go along for the ride without making too much fuss about this existence thingy. I find it difficult to forget about it though and whilst there are some fantastic distractions out there none of them really come close to the wonder and divine terror of pushing my tiny heart up against the majestic altar of infinite eternity. Don’t misunderstand me, I like a bit of Game of Thrones and a nice piece of cake but that great throbbing heartbeat drum of creation is impossible to ignore even with the headphones in and the cake in mid chew. I know you all hear it too. Some quieter, some louder. It echoes through when you are alone and hurting or watching the merciless wheel of life take another friend. It sounds in your laughter when the wind blows your hair across your face or a bird sings, bright and unexpected through the city rain. It keeps the beat to our music and our poems, gives the colour to our art and the grace to our dancing. It gives rhythm to our prayers and lets our lives soar like the notes of the bamboo flute in search of the iridescent tones of love. We all hear it. Always. That love that is your heartbeat and the one heartbeat.
Strange that we don’t mention it so often. Hidden in plain sight, presence meeting presence. Behind the words and deeds of our wise and foolish lives. Sorry to bring it up but it drives me absolutely nuts when that elephant is standing on my toe and I’m not supposed to scream! The best way I know to handle that toe-crushing, ego-crumbling wonder is simply to listen. To share with you the ups and downs, sadness and joy of an ‘ordinary’ life and as we speak tilt my head a little, turning my ear to the great thrum of life and the silently soaring symphony of creation. When I listen a little deeper I hear you so much more clearly and I’m not in such a big hurry to speak. For I know that I am in the presence of presence, and in the room of the most high the only real response is gratitude and the only language is love colouring the thread of every word I speak as I compliment you happily on your lovely new hat and wish you a good day on this kind earth.