When I was 17, just before my final year of high school, the Painted Cave Fire consumed over 600 structures, including our family home.
First lesson in impermanence.
As I watch the destruction and suffering associated with the Palisades Fire in LA, I track those friends and family under mandatory evacuation, while still others spend sleepless nights with the flames visible from their homes. Ash is raining down twenty miles away, while the air at that distance smells postapocalyptic.
The past couple of nights, a meditation known in Buddhism as the Five Remembrances has helped me create a needed space for stillness.
I share a version (in case you are unfamiliar) with the hope that it helps you create that needed space.
I am of the nature that I will grow old.
I am of the nature that I will grow ill.
I am of the nature that I will lose those I love.
I am of the nature that I will die.
How, then will I choose to live?