Life, one day at a time

Last few weeks the misery and destruction of Cyclone Nargis and Sichuan earthquake have gripped one and all.

We see these everyday these days in the newspaper - bodies floating in muddy waters, parents dead clutching their children, a headless torso caught between branches of a tree - not a word accompanied these, but then I guess no words were needed.

Since then I have found a little voice in me piping up : "what is a life?".
This question has piped up since late Feb in me (why this specifc month - I can't and won't tell!)

While I am madly glad to be alive, I strained for an answer then, as I do now.

While my situation is by no means any comparison to Nargis and Sichuan victims / survivors - who perhaps have just stubs of potatoes and onions to live on indefinetely?

I wonder what was life to that 60 year old man who was pulled out alive from the rubble after 12 days - that has buried his past, present and future?

When more than 90,000 people in Asia return to dust within 14 days, life does seem cheap.

Or am I looking at it the wrong way around?

A task, for instance, may be hard, but once you accept that it is hard, then suffering loses its sting, and you just get on with it.

In the same way, I think, it is only when one accepts that birth, death and all the bumps and burps in between mean essentially nothing in fullness of time that one is truly freed to begin casting the risk-shy ego and invest one's life with meaning.

To love living while accepting the slings it brings also writes off the dead-weight debts to self we incur every day from anger, guilt, pride and heart break.

I wonder if love make meaning-ful which has somehow been rendered meaning-less?

Like the anecdotal hermit, I still have no answer as to what life is because, really, none is needed. I look around me, thank God that I can still see, sniff, touch, hear, talk and feel!

And what a joy it is just to be!