Last week I found that I had a pure white eyebrow hair. Furthermore, this week was my first back to work after two months off. I’m listening to the Wailin’ Jennys. There’s nothing like a high, reedy voice with a mandolin, white eyebrow hair, and the last quiet whispers of summer to get a girl thinking about death.
Now as a metaphysician, I know that endings are a human construct. (As a kid I always loved to think about what was on the other side of the wall at the end of space. It couldn’t be more space, right? Because space was already ended! So what is it?) However, as a flesh and blood lady, I can tell you that I definitely experience endings, even knowing that they are illusionary.
I just returned from a trip to Guatemala. While I was there I went on a hike at Lago de Atitlan and, within the same span of a few hours, I saw a real live translucent butterfly, a creek bed strewn with plastic bottles and potato chip bags, a serene meditation center surrounded by immaculately tended gardens, and a machismo man in a truck running over a small black and white dog. Ends and beginnings, layer on layer.
In Brahma Kumaris meditation class we learned about the yugas–the four ages of humanity. We start with the Satya yuga–the Golden Age–which was a time of great contentment and happiness. These are then followed by the Dvapara Yuga (Silver Age), the Treta Yuga (Copper Age), and finally the Kali Yuga (Iron Age). These ages pass just like the seasons. In fact, each age shares certain attributes with a corresponding season: Golden/summer=plentiful food, restful; Silver/fall= harvest, turning inward, sweaters, campfires; Copper/winter=cold, gray, melancholy; and Iron/spring=chaotic, extremes…and the promise of a new beginning. At the end of the Kali Yuga is the Confluence, the time when the sun returns and brings back the bliss of the Golden Age.
It’s all a cycle. It will all come back around again…and next time will be even better, because we will be bringing new tools and new understandings that we hadn’t reached yet this go round. Bring on the white eyebrow hairs…