Beauty Is Not Your Refuge

Life lessons on the subway

Sitting across from me on the blue subway bench this morning was an older woman maybe sixty. She was radiant, and yet ordinary, concealed in the mundane, aged by life, and transcendent. She must have been exquisite in her youth, half life leaving its trace behind.

Inadvertently captured, I took her in furtively, and the edge of something inside me glistened, a room opening in my heart. The truth about love and beauty calling to be known in this lifetime came forth, ripening. In that instant, in the most quiet way— a recognition surfaced— I could sense the emptiness in exaltation.

The train pulled into the station and she gathered herself up. Gazing toward the ground, she exited behind her husband and folded back into the ocean of humans going from one place to the next.

Left behind, I followed the moment inward and touched an unfolding feeling, my own longing for an indelible place in this world, some objective value.

Death on my right, a generous teacher, whispered its inevitable truths, “You are nothing. Rejoice.”

Sit on the shore and watch the waves come in over and over. Let the sound of eternity be your only home.

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