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| Krishna's Butterball, Mahabalipuram (Southeast coast of India) |
'Krishna's Butterball' -- it's no big deal, except that the five meter wide, six meters high gigantic rock sits pretty neat at a short incline on its 1.2 meter base. Talk of balancing weight!
What I like best about this spectacle is the defiance it presents by refusing to give in to gravity. Well, the apple did fall to the ground, and here we have 250 tonnes of ancient rock standing still on a 45 degree hilly slope for over 1200 years. It hasn't rolled off -- 'Stone of Sky God' indeed. Shouldn't it though? It could; it might... perhaps some day. Again maybe not for another 1200 years -- who knows?!
So much for historical musings. We have a disease to deal with now, and it has taken the world by shock. Holding us quarantined, and at ransom; from toilet paper to James Bond -- all cow down without exception to #COVID19. We had our days (if not our lives) chalked out, and went about breathing life into our hopes and dreams. And then, this #LOCKDOWN. 14 days, 21 days, 49 days... six months... we know deep down life as we know it has changed.
What I like best about this spectacle is the defiance it presents by refusing to give in to gravity. Well, the apple did fall to the ground, and here we have 250 tonnes of ancient rock standing still on a 45 degree hilly slope for over 1200 years. It hasn't rolled off -- 'Stone of Sky God' indeed. Shouldn't it though? It could; it might... perhaps some day. Again maybe not for another 1200 years -- who knows?!
So much for historical musings. We have a disease to deal with now, and it has taken the world by shock. Holding us quarantined, and at ransom; from toilet paper to James Bond -- all cow down without exception to #COVID19. We had our days (if not our lives) chalked out, and went about breathing life into our hopes and dreams. And then, this #LOCKDOWN. 14 days, 21 days, 49 days... six months... we know deep down life as we know it has changed.
Almost every electronic communication I received over the last two months has begun with: In these uncertain times, or surreal times, or complicated, or wierd times... Depressing, to say the least. But perhaps some of us have already gained wisdom around the fact that there's nothing certain about life. Yet it comes so naturally that we plan for a 'better' tomorrow, a 'bright' future, a 'perfect' acquisition, a 'prominent' something. We do this for ourselves, our family, their children, maybe even for our grandchildren. Much of this reasoning is dependent on how our life exposes us, to what experiences, with whom, and when these occasions occur in the trajectory of life.
I'm reminded of a conversation I had with a friend recently on what worries most, and it turned out that much sleep is lost on understanding the certainty of things that make up life. The search for certainty we cannot honestly avoid for it is soaked in the human spirit, the core of survival, of thriving. But then, the awareness that uncertainties are a certainty is good to keep that balance between standing ground and rolling off, I guess. We will, in the end, find our way around uncertain everythings and build paths that defy or prepare us with certainty. Remember the rocky butterball.
