So different, yet the same

Today I ate my lunch outside. It was a warm, breezy spring day, one of these perfect days that we experience rarely in a year. The sky was blue, the trees full of white and pink flowers, the air felt and smelled sweet, and the breeze was just cold enough to make me appreciate the warmth of the sun.It occurred to me that about 30 years ago I was having the same identical experience. I was in high school in Rome and that spring day I decided to eat lunch with a few friends in park. I was so much younger, I lived in a different city in a different country in a different continent. The world around me was different and I had different dreams and concerns. For all intents and purposes, I was a different person.

Yet the feeling of calm “as if time had suddenly slowed down and almost stopped” and awe at the beauty of that particular moment were the same. Perhaps there are feelings that don’t belong to us and cut through time and space, and are just there to be felt. Perhaps enlightenment is when we can quiet everything else inside us and outside of us and just be inside these unchanging experiences that are just there waiting for us to notice.