the razor-thin line of being

i took this shot thinking i saw something special in those lines. turned out to be a pretty ordinary photo. which i was tempted to say is a lot like life. because it is a lot like life, at least as seen from one perspective. the extraordinary in our imagination often deflates into the ordinary when actually experienced. few christmas mornings satisfy the yearnings of christmas eve.

but it also strikes me as ungrateful in the extreme to ever call life itself ordinary.

here's our story. billions of years behind us, nothing. then there you are. life. just somehow, improbably, there you are. a little blip. a translucently-thin slice of time. then nothing again (possibly) forever and ever.

so it seems like there's a whole lot of nothing goin' on in that story. billions of years behind us. eternity ahead of us. and yet that tiny little slice. a single sixteenth note of music in a long symphony of silence. and yet it's pretty special. pretty magical. definitely not ordinary.

and so, you know, not to be either too dramatic or melodramatic here, but life as seen from this perspective puts our neighbors in a special light. this tiny chance of existing. this tiny chance of existing together, you and i. sharing a special razor-thin slice of time together. fellow sojourners on the most statistically improbable journey of all, the journey of being.

definitely not ordinary.